Meditation is not an Indian method; it is not simply a technique. You cannot learn it. It is a growth: a growth of your total living, out of your total living.

Meditation is not something that can be added to you as you are. It can come to you only through a basic transformation, a mutation. It is a flowering, a growth. Growth is always out of the total; it is not an addition.

You must grow toward meditation. This total flowering of the personality must be understood correctly. Otherwise one can play games with oneself, one can occupy oneself with mental tricks. And there are so many tricks! Not only can you be fooled by them, not only will you not gain anything, but in a real sense you will be harmed.

The very attitude that there is some trick to meditation – to conceive of meditation in terms of method – is basically wrong. And when one begins to play with mental tricks, the very quality of the mind begins to deteriorate. As mind exists, it is not meditative.

The total mind must change before meditation can happen. Then what is the mind as it now exists? How does it function? The mind is always verbalizing. You can know words, you can know language, you can know the conceptual structure of thinking, but that is not thinking.

On the contrary, it is an escape from thinking. You see a flower and you verbalize it; you see a man crossing the street and you verbalize it. The mind can transform every existential thing into words. Then the words become a barrier, imprisonment.

This constant transformation of things into words, of existence into words, is the obstacle to a meditative mind. So the first requirement toward a meditative mind is to be aware of your constant verbalizing and to be able to stop it. Just see things; do not verbalize.

Be aware of their presence, but do not change them into words. Let things be, without language; let persons be, without language; let situations be, without language. It is not impossible; it is natural. It is the situation as it now exists that is artificial, but we have become so habituated to it, it has become so mechanical, that we are not even aware that we are constantly transforming experience into words. The sunrise is there. You are never aware of the gap between seeing it and verbalizing.

You see the sun, you feel it, and immediately you verbalize it. The gap between seeing and verbalizing is lost. One must become aware of the fact that the sunrise is not a word.

It is a fact, a presence. The mind automatically changes experiences into words. These words then come between you and the experience. Meditation means living without words, living no linguistically. Sometimes it happens spontaneously.

When you are in love, presence is felt, not language. Whenever two lovers are intimate with one another they become silent. It is not that there is nothing to express. On the contrary, there is an overwhelming amount to be expressed. But words are never there; they cannot be. They come only when love has gone. If two lovers are never silent, it is an indication that love has died.

Now they are filling the gap with words. When love is alive, words are not there because the very existence of love is so overwhelming, so penetrating, that the barrier of language and words is crossed. And ordinarily, it is only crossed in love. Meditation is the culmination of love: love not for a single person, but for the total existence. To me, meditation is a living relationship with the total existence that surrounds you.

If you can be in love with any situation, then you are in meditation. And this is not a mental trick. It is not a method of stilling the mind. Rather, it requires a deep understanding of the mechanism of the mind. The moment you understand your mechanical habit of verbalization, of changing existence into words, a gap is created. It comes spontaneously. It follows understanding like a shadow.

The real problem is not how to be in meditation, but to know why you are not in meditation. The very process of meditation is negative. It is not adding something to you; it is negating something that has already been added. Society cannot exist without language; it needs language.

But existence does not need it. I am not saying that you should exist without language. You will have to use it. But you must be able to turn the mechanism of verbalization on and off. When you are existing as a social being, the mechanism of language is needed; but when you are alone with existence, you must be able to turn it off.

If you can’t turn it off – if it goes on and on, and you are incapable of stopping it – then you have become a slave to it. Mind must be an instrument, not the master. When mind is the master, a non-meditative state exists. When you are the master, your consciousness is the master, a meditative state exists. So meditation means becoming a master of the mechanism of the mind.

Mind, and the linguistic functioning of the mind, is not the ultimate. You are beyond it; existence is beyond it. Consciousness is beyond linguistics; existence is beyond linguistics. When consciousness and existence are one, they are in communion.

This communion is meditation. Language must be dropped. I don’t mean that you have to suppress it or eliminate it. I only mean that it does not have to be a twenty-four-hour-a-day habit for you. When you walk, you need to move your legs. But if they go on moving when you are sitting, then you are mad.

You must be able to turn them off. In the same way, when you are not talking with anyone, language must not be there. It is a technique to communicate. When you are not communicating with anybody it should not be there. If you are able to do this, you can grow into meditation. Meditation is a growing process, not a technique. A technique is always dead, so it can be added to you, but a process is always alive. It grows, it expands. Language is needed, but you must not always remain in it.

There must be moments when there is no verbalizing, when you just exist. It is not that you are just vegetating. Consciousness is there. And it is more acute, more alive, because language dulls it. Language is bound to be repetitive so it creates boredom.

The more important language is to you, the more bored you will be. Existence is never repetitive. Every rose is a new rose, altogether new. It has never been and it will never be again. But when we call it a rose, the word ‘rose’ is a repetition. It has always been there; it will always be there. You have killed the new with an old word. Existence is always young, and language is always old.

Through language, you escape existence, you escape life, because language is dead. The more involved you are with language, the more deadened you will be by it. A pundit is completely dead because he is nothing but language, words. Sartre has called his autobiography ’Words’. We live in words. That is, we don’t live. In the end there is only a series of accumulated words and nothing else.

Words are like photographs. You see something that is alive and you take a picture of it. The picture is dead. Then you make an album of dead pictures. A person who has not lived in meditation is like a dead album. Only verbal pictures are there, only memories.

Nothing has been lived; everything has just been verbalized. Meditation means living totally, but you can live totally only when you are silent. By being silent I do not mean unconscious. You can be silent and unconscious but it is not a living silence. Again, you have missed.

Through mantras you can auto hypnotize yourself. By simply repeating a word you can create so much boredom in the mind that the mind will go to sleep. You drop into sleep, drop into the unconscious. If you go on chanting” RamRamRam” the mind will fall asleep. Then the barrier of language is not there, but you are unconscious. Meditation means that language must not be there, but you must be conscious. Otherwise, there is no communion with existence, with all that is. No mantra can help, no chanting can help. Autohypnosis is not meditation. On the contrary, to be in an autohypnotic state is a regression. It is not going beyond language; it is falling below it.

So drop all mantras, drop all these techniques. Allow moments to exist where words are not there. You cannot get rid of words with a mantra because the very process uses words. You cannot eliminate language with words; it is impossible. So what is to be done? In fact, you cannot do anything at all except to understand. Whatever you are able to do can only come from where you are.

You are confused, you are not in meditation, your mind is not silent, so anything that comes out of you will only create more confusion. All that can be done right now is to begin to be aware of how the mind functions. That’s all – just be aware. Awareness has nothing to do with words. It is an existential act, not a mental act. So the first thing is to be aware. Be aware of your mental processes, how your mind works.

The moment you become aware of the functioning of your mind, you are not the mind. The very awareness means that you are beyond: aloof, a witness. And the more aware you become, the more you will be able to see the gaps between the experience and the words. Gaps are there, but you are so unaware that they are never seen. Between two words there is always a gap, however imperceptible, however small. Otherwise the two words cannot remain two; they will become one. Between two notes of music there is always a gap, a silence. Two words or two notes cannot be two unless there is an interval between them.

A silence is always there but one has to be really aware, really attentive, to feel it. The more aware you become, the slower the mind becomes. It is always relative. The less aware you are, the faster the mind is; the more aware you are, the slower the process of the mind is. When you are more aware of the mind, the mind slows down and the gaps between thoughts widen.

Then you can see them. It is just like a film. When a projector is run in slow motion, you see the gaps. If I raise my hand, this has to be shot in a thousand parts. Each part will be a single photograph. If these thousands of single photographs pass before your eyes so fast that you cannot see the gaps, then you see the hand raised as a process. But in slow motion, the gaps can be seen. Mind is just like a film. Gaps are there. The more attentive you are to your mind, the more you will see them. It is just like a gestalt picture: a picture that contains two distinct images at the same time.

One image can be seen or the other can be seen, but you cannot see both simultaneously. It can be a picture of an old lady, and at the same time a picture of a young lady. But if you are focused on one, you will not see the other; and when you are focused on the other, the first is lost. Even if you know perfectly well that you have seen both images, you cannot see them simultaneously.

The same thing happens with the mind. If you see the words you cannot see the gaps, and if you see the gaps you cannot see the words. Every word is followed by a gap and every gap is followed by a word, but you cannot see both simultaneously. If you are focused on the gaps, words will be lost and you will be thrown into meditation. A consciousness that is focused only on words is non-meditative and a consciousness that is focused only on gaps is meditative. Whenever you become aware of the gaps, the words will be lost. If you observe carefully, you will not find words; you will only find a gap.
You can feel the difference between two words, but you cannot feel the difference between two gaps. Words are always plural and the gap is always singular: ”the” gap. They merge and become one. Meditation is a focusing on the gap. Then, the whole gestalt changes. Another thing is to be understood.

If you are looking at the gestalt picture and your concentration is focused on the old lady, you cannot see the other picture. But if you continue to concentrate on the old lady – if you go on focusing on her, if you become totally attentive to her – a moment will come when the focus changes and suddenly the old lady has disappeared and the other picture is there. Why does this happen? It happens because the mind cannot be focused continuously for a long time. It has to change or it will go to sleep.

These are the only two possibilities. If you go on concentrating on one thing, the mind will fall asleep. It cannot remain fixed; it is a living process. If you let it become bored it will go to sleep in order to escape from the stagnancy of your focus. Then it can continue living, in dreams. This is meditation Maharishi Mahesh Yogi style. It’s peaceful, refreshing, it can help your physical health and mental equilibrium, but it is not meditation. The same thing can be done by autohypnosis.

The Indian word ‘mantra’ means suggestion, nothing else. To take this as meditation is a serious mistake. It is not. And if you think of it as meditation, you will never search for authentic meditation.

That is the real harm that is done by such practices and propagandists of such practices. It is just drugging yourself psychologically. So don’t use any mantra to push words out of the way. Just become aware of the words and the focus of your mind will change automatically to the gaps. If you identify with words, you will go on jumping from one word to another and you will miss the gap. Another word is something new to focus on.

The mind goes on changing; the focus changes. But if you are not identified with words, if you are just a witness – aloof, just watching the words as they go by in a procession – then the whole focus will change and you will become aware of the gap. It is just as if you are on the street, watching people as they pass by. One person has passed and another has not yet come.

There is a gap; the street is vacant. If you are watching, then you will know the gap. And once you know the gap, you are in it; you have jumped into it. It is an abyss – so peace-giving, so consciousness-creating. It is meditation to be in the gap; it is transformation.

Now language is not needed; you will drop it. It is a conscious dropping. You are conscious of the silence, the infinite silence. You are part of it, one with it.

You are not conscious of the abyss as the other; you are conscious of the abyss as yourself. You know, but now you are the knowing. You observe the gap, but now the observer is the observed. As far as words and thoughts are concerned, you are a witness, separate, and words are the other. But when there are no words, you are the gap – yet still conscious that you are.

Between you and the gap, between consciousness and existence, there is no barrier now. Only words are the barrier. Now you are in an existential situation. This is meditation: to be one with existence, to be totally in it and still conscious. This is the contradiction, this is the paradox. Now you have known a situation in which you were conscious, and yet one with it. The
Ordinarily, when we are conscious of anything, the thing becomes the other. If we are identified with something, then it is not the other, but then we are not conscious – as in anger, in sex. We become one only when we are unconscious. Sex has so much appeal because in sex you become one for a moment. But in that moment, you are unconscious. You seek the unconsciousness because you seek the oneness. But the more you seek it, the more conscious you become.

Then you will not feel the bliss of sex, because the bliss was coming from the unconsciousness. You could become unconscious in a moment of passion. Your consciousness dropped. For a single moment you were in the abyss – but unconscious. But the more you seek it, the more it is lost. Finally a moment comes when you are in sex and the moment of unconsciousness no longer happens. The abyss is lost, the bliss is lost. Then the act becomes stupid. It is just a mechanical release; there is nothing spiritual about it. We have known only unconscious oneness; we have never known conscious oneness.

Meditation is conscious oneness. It is the other pole of sexuality. Sex is one pole, unconscious oneness; meditation is the other pole, conscious oneness. Sex is the lowest point of oneness and meditation is the peak, the highest peak of oneness. The difference is a difference of consciousness. The Western mind is thinking about meditation now because the appeal of sex has been lost. Whenever a society becomes no suppressive sexually, meditation will follow, because uninhibited sex will kill the charm and romance of sex; it will kill the spiritual side of it. Much sex is there, but you cannot continue to be unconscious in it.

A sexually suppressed society can remain sexual, but a no suppressive, uninhibited society cannot remain with sexuality forever. It will have to be transcended. So if a society is sexual, meditation will follow. To me, a sexually free society is the first step toward seeking, searching. But of course, because the search is there, it can be exploited. It is being exploited by the East. Gurus can be supplied; they can be exported. And they are being exported. But only tricks can be learned through these gurus. Understanding comes through life, through living. It cannot be given, transferred. I cannot give you my understanding. I can talk about it, but I cannot give it to you. You will have to find it. You will have to go into life.

You will have to err; you will have to fail; you will have to pass through many frustrations. But only through failures, errors, frustrations, only through the encounter of real living, will you come to meditation. That is why I say it is a growth. Something can be understood, but understanding that comes through another can never be more than intellectual. That is why JidduKrishnamurti demands the impossible. He says, ”Do not understand me intellectually” – but nothing except intellectual understanding can come from someone else. That is why JidduKrishnamurti’s effort has been absurd. What he is saying is authentic, but when he demands more than intellectual understanding from the listener, it is impossible.

Nothing more can come from someone else, nothing more can be delivered. But intellectual understanding can be enough. If you can understand what I am saying intellectually, you can also understand what has not been said. You can also understand the gaps: what I am not saying, what I cannot say. The first understanding is bound to be intellectual, because the intellect is the door. It can never be spiritual. Spirituality is the inner shrine.
I can only communicate to you intellectually. If you can really understand it, then what has not been said can be felt. I cannot communicate without words, but when I am using words I am also using silences. You will have to be aware of both. If only words are being understood then it is a communication; but if you can be aware of the gaps also, then it is a communion. One has to begin somewhere.

Every beginning is bound to be a false beginning, but one has to begin. Through the false, through the groping, the door is found. One who thinks that he will begin only when the right beginning is there will never begin at all. Even a false step is a step in the right direction because it is a step, a beginning. You begin to grope in the dark and, through groping, the door is found.

That is why I said to be aware of the linguistic process – the process of words – and to seek an awareness of the gaps, the intervals. There will be moments when there will be no conscious effort on your part and you will become aware of the gaps. That is the encounter with the divine, the encounter with the existential. Whenever there is an encounter, do not escape from it. Be with it. It will be fearful at first; it is bound to be. Whenever the unknown is encountered, fear is created because to us the unknown is death.

So whenever there is a gap, you will feel death coming to you. Then be dead! Just be in it, and die completely in the gap. And you will be resurrected. By dying your death in silence, life is resurrected. You are alive for the first time, really alive. So to me, meditation is not a method but a process; meditation is not a technique but an understanding. It cannot be taught; it can only be indicated. You cannot be informed about it because no information is really information.

It is from the outside, and meditation comes from your own inner depths. So search, be a seeker, and do not be a disciple. Then you will not be a disciple of some guru, but a disciple of the total life. Then you will not just be learning words. Spiritual learning cannot come from words but from the gaps, the silences that are always surrounding you. They are there even in the crowd, in the market, in the bazaar.

Seek the silences, seek the gaps within and without, and one day you will find that you are in meditation. Meditation comes to you. It always comes; you cannot bring it. But one has to be in search of it, because only when you are in search will you be open to it, vulnerable to it. You are a host to it.

Meditation is a guest. You can invite it and wait for it. It comes to Buddha, it comes to Jesus, it comes to everybody who is ready, who is open and seeking. But do not learn it from somewhere; otherwise you will be tricked. The mind is always searching for something easier.

This becomes the source for exploitation. Then there are gurus and gurudoms, and spiritual life is poisoned. The most dangerous person is the one who exploits someone’s spiritual urge. If someone robs you of your wealth it is not so serious, if someone fails you it is not so serious, but if someone tricks you and kills, or even postpones, your urge toward meditation, toward the divine, toward ecstasy, then the sin is great and unforgivable. But that is being done. So be aware of it, and don’t ask anybody, ”What is meditation? How do I meditate?” Instead, ask what the hindrances are, what the obstacles are. Ask why we aren’t always

in meditation, where the growth has been stopped, where we have been crippled. And do not seek a guru because gurus are crippling. Anyone who gives you ready-made formulas is not a friend but an enemy. Grope in the dark. Nothing else can be done.

The very groping will become the understanding that will liberate you from darkness. Jesus said: ”Truth is freedom.” Understand this freedom. Truth is always through understanding. It is not something that you meet and encounter; it is something you grow into.

So be in search of understanding, because the more understanding you become, the nearer you will be to truth. And in some unknown, expected, unpredictable moment, when understanding comes to a peak, you are in the abyss. You are no more, and meditation is.

When you are no more, you are in meditation. Meditation is not more of you; it is always beyond you. When you are in the abyss, meditation is there. Then the ego is not; then you are not. Then the being is. That is what religions mean by God: the ultimate being.

It is the essence of all religions, all searches, but it is not to be found anywhere ready-made. So be aware of anyone who makes claims about it. Go on groping and don’t be afraid of failure. Admit failures, but do not commit the same failures again. Once is all; that is enough.

The person who goes on erring in the search for truth is always forgiven. It is a promise from the very depths of existence.

This is answer is given by the Mystic “Osho”.

Existence is energy, the movement of energy in so many ways and so many forms. As far as human existence is concerned, this energy is kundalini energy.

Kundalini is the focused energy of the human body and human psyche. Energy can exist either manifested or unmanifested. It can remain in the seed, or it can come up in a manifested form.

Every energy is either in the seed or in the manifested form. Kundalini means your total potential, your total possibility. But it is a seed; it is the potential.

The ways to awaken kundalini are ways to make your potential actual. So first of all, kundalini is not something unique. It is only human energy as such. But ordinarily only a part of it is functioning, a very minute part. Even that part is not functioning harmoniously; it is in conflict.

That is the misery, the anguish. If your energy can function harmoniously then you feel bliss, but if it is in conflict – if it is antagonistic to itself – then you feel miserable. All misery means that your energy is in conflict, and all happiness, all bliss, means that your energy is in harmony. Why is the whole energy only potential, not actual? It is not needed as far as day-to-day life is concerned – it is not required.

Only that part becomes functional that is required, challenged. Dayto-day life is not a challenge to it, so only a very minute part becomes manifest. And even this small, manifested part is not harmonious because your day-to-day life is not integrated.

contradictory. Social requirements and personal requirements are in conflict. Society has its requirements; morality and religion have their requirements.

These conflicts have prevented man from being a harmonious whole. They have made man fragmentary. In the morning one thing is required; in the afternoon something else is required. Your wife requires something from you; your mother requires something quite contrary.

Then day-to-day life becomes a conflicting demand on you, and the minute part of your total energy that has become manifest is in conflict with itself. There is also another conflict. The part that has become manifest will always be in conflict with the part that has not yet become manifest; the actual will always be in conflict with the potential.

The potential will push itself to be manifested, and the actual will suppress it. To use psychological terms, the unconscious is always in conflict with the conscious. The conscious will try to dominate it, because it is always in danger of the unconscious manifesting itself.

The conscious is under control and the potential, the unconscious, is not. You can manage the conscious, but with an explosion of the unconscious you will be in insecurity. You will not be able to manage it. That is the fear of the conscious.

So this is the other conflict, greater and deeper than the first: the conflict between the conscious and the unconscious, between the energy that has become manifest and the energy that wants to be manifested. These two types of conflict are why you are not in harmony. And if you are not in harmony, your energy will become antagonistic to you. Energy needs movement, and movement is always from the unmanifest toward the manifest, from the seed toward the tree, from the dark toward the light. This movement is possible only if there is no suppression.

Otherwise the movement, the harmony, is destroyed and your energy becomes an enemy to you. You become a house divided against itself; you become a crowd. Then you are not one; you are many. This is the situation that exists as far as human beings are concerned. But this should not be. This is why there is ugliness and misery. Bliss and beauty can come only when your life energy is in movement, in easy movement, relaxed movement – unsuppressed, uninhibited; integrated, not fragmentary; not in conflict with itself, but one and organic.

When your energy comes to this harmonious unity, that is what is meant by kundalini. Kundalini is just a technical term for your whole energy when it is in unity, in movement, in harmony, without any conflict; when it is cooperative, complementary and organic. Then and there, there is a transformation – unique and unknown. When energies are in conflict, you want to relieve them. You feel at ease only when your conflicting energies are released, thrown off. But whenever you throw them off, your life energy, your vitality, moves downward, or outward.

The downward movement is the outward movement, and the upward movement is the inward movement. The more your energies go up, the more they go in; the more they go down, the more they move out. If you throw your conflicting energies out you will feel relief, but that is just like throwing your life away in bits and fragments, in instalments. It is suicidal. Unless our life energy becomes one and harmonious, and the flow becomes inward, we are suicidal. When you are throwing out energy you feel relieved, but the relief is bound to be momentary because you are a constant source of energy. Energy accumulates again and you will have to get rid of it there is a movement inward. That movement is endless. It becomes deeper and deeper, and the deeper it goes, the more blissful it becomes, the more ecstatic. So energy can have two possibilities.

The first is just a relief, a throwing off of energies which have become a burden to you, which you could not utilize and with which you could not be creative. This state of mind is anti-kundalini. The ordinary state of human beings is anti-kundalini. Energy moves from the center toward the periphery because that is the direction you are moving toward. Kundalini means just the opposite. Forces, energies, move from the periphery toward the center.

The movement inward, the center-oriented movement, is blissful, while the outward movement gives both happiness and misery. There will be momentary happiness and permanent misery. Happiness will come only in gaps. Only when you hope, only when you have expectations, is the gap there. The actual result is always misery. Happiness is in expectation, in hoping, in desiring, in dreaming. It is only that you are relieved of your burden; the happiness is totally negative. There is no happiness as such, but only the momentary absence of misery. That absence is taken as happiness. You are constantly creating new energies.

That is what is meant by life: the ability to go on creating the life force. The moment the capacity is gone, you are dead. This is the paradox: you go on creating energy and you don’t know what to do with it. When it is created you throw it off and when it is not created you feel miserable, ill. The moment the life force is not created, you feel ill; but when it is created, you again feel ill. The first illness is that of weakness, and the second illness is that of energy that has become a burden to you.

You are not able to harmonize it, to make it creative, to make it blissful. You have created it and now you don’t know what to do with it, so you just throw it off. Then you create more energy again. This is absurd, but this absurdity is what we ordinarily mean by human existence: constantly creating energy that constantly becomes burdensome and that you constantly have to relieve.

That is why sex has become so important, so significant because it is one of the greatest means to rid yourself of energy. If the society becomes affluent, you have more sources through which energy can be created. Then you become more sexual, because you have more tensions to relieve. There is a constant creating of energy and throwing out of energy. If one is intelligent enough, sensitive enough, then one will feel the absurdity of it, the whole meaninglessness of it.

Then one will feel the purposelessness of life. Are you just an instrument to create energy and throw it out? What is the meaning of this? What is the need to exist at all? Just to be an instrument in which energy is created and thrown out? So the more sensitive a person is, the more he feels the meaninglessness of life as we know it.Kundalini means to change this absurd situation into a meaningful one. The science of kundalini is one of the most subtle sciences.

The physical sciences are also concerned with energy, but with material energy not psychic energy. Yoga is concerned with psychic energy. It is a science of the metaphysical, of that which is transcendental. Just like the material energy that science is concerned with, this psychic energy can be creative or destructive. If it is not used, it becomes destructive; if it is used, it becomes creative. But it can also be used noncreatively.

The way to make it creative is first to understand that you should not realize only part of your potential. If one part is realized and the remaining, major portion of your potential is unrealized, it is not a situation that can be creative. The whole must be realized; your whole potential must be actualized. There are methods to realize the potential, to make it actual, to make it awake. It is sleeping, just like a snake. That is why it has been named kundalini: serpent power, a sleeping serpent. If you have ever seen a serpent sleeping, it is just like that.

It is coiled; there is no movement at all. But a serpent can stand up straight on its tail. It stands by its energy. That is why the serpent has been used symbolically. Your life energy is also coiled and asleep. But it can become straight; it can become awake, with its full potential actualized. Then you will be transformed. Life and death are only two states of energy. Life means energy functioning, and death means energy nonfunctioning.

Life means energy awake; death means energy gone again into sleep. So according to kundalini yoga, you are ordinarily only partially alive. The part of your energy that has become actualized is your life. The remaining part is so asleep that it is as if it were not. But it can be awakened. There are so many methods through which kundalini yoga tries to make the potential actual. For example, pranayama, breath control, is one of the methods to hammer the sleeping energy.

Through breath, the hammering is possible because breathing is the bridge between your vital energy – your prana, your original source of vitality – and your actual existence. It is the bridge between the potential and the actual. The moment you change your breathing system, your total energy system changes. When you are asleep your breathing changes. When you are awake your breathing changes. When you are angry your breathing is different; when you are in love your breathing is different; when you are in sexual passion your breathing is different. In every state of mind a particular quality of life force is there, so your breathing changes.

When you are angry you require more energy on the periphery. If you are in danger – if you have to attack or you have to defend yourself – more energy is needed on the periphery. The energy will rush from the center. Because a great quantity of energy is thrown off from your body during the sex act, you feel exhausted afterward. And after anger, too, you will feel exhausted. But after a loving moment, you will not feel exhausted. You will feel fresh. After prayer, you will feel fresh.

Why has the contrary happened? When you are in a loving moment, energy is not needed on the periphery because there is no danger. You are at ease, relaxed, so the energy flow is inward. When energy flows inward, you feel fresh.After deep breathing you will feel fresh, because energy is flowing inward. When energy flows inward you feel vitalized, fulfilled; you feel a well-being. Another thing to notice: when energy is going inward, your breath will begin to have a different quality. It will be relaxed, rhythmic, harmonious.

There will be moments when you will not feel it at all, when you will feel as if it has stopped. It becomes so subtle! Because energy is not needed, the breath stops. In samadhi, in ecstasy, one feels that the breath has stopped completely. No outward flow of energy is needed, so the breath is unnecessary. Through pranayama this potential energy within you is systematically awakened. It can also be tapped through asanas, yogic postures, because your body is connected at every point to the source of energy. So every posture has a corresponding effect on the energy source.

The posture that Buddha used is called padmasan, the lotus posture. It is one of the postures in which the least amount of energy is needed. If you sit up straight, sitting is so balanced that you become one with the earth. There is no gravitational pull. And if your hands and feet are in such a position that a closed circuit is created, the life electricity will flow in a circuit. Buddha’s posture is a round posture. Energy becomes circular; it is not thrown out.

Energy always moves out through the fingers, hands or feet. But through a round shape, energy cannot flow out. That is why women are more resistant to illness than men, and why they live longer. The rounder the body is, the less energy flows outward. Women are not so exhausted after the sex act because the shape of their sexual organ is round and absorbing. Men will be more exhausted. Because of the shape of their sexual organ, more energy is thrown out. Not only biological energy, but psychic energy also. All the energy outlets are joined together in padmasan, so no energy can move outward. Both feet are crossed, the hands touch the feet and the feet touch the sex center. And the posture is so erect that there is no gravitational pull. In this posture, one can forget the body completely because life energy is not flowing outward.

The eyes are also to be closed or half closed and the eyeballs still, because eyes are also a great outlet for energy. Even in dreams you throw out much energy through eye movements. In fact, one way to know whether a person is dreaming or not is to put your fingers on his eyes. If they are moving, then he is dreaming. Awaken him, and you will find he was dreaming. If the eyeballs are not moving, then he is in deep, dreamless sleep, sushupti. All energy is going inward and nothing is going outward. Asanas, pranayama – there are so many methods through which energies can be made to flow inward. When they flow inward they become one, because at the center there cannot be more than one. So the more energy goes inward, the more harmony there is. Conflicts drop. In the center there is no conflict. There is an organic unity of the whole.

That is why bliss is felt. Another thing: asanas and pranayama are bodily helps. They are important, but they are only physical helps. If your mind is in conflict then they will not be of much help, because body and mind are not two things really. They are two parts of one thing. You are not body and mind; you are body/mind. You are psycho/somatic or somato/psychic. We talk about the body as one thing and the mind as something different, but body and mind are two poles of one energy. The body is gross and the mind is subtle, but the energy is the same. One has to work from both polarities. For the body there is hatha yoga: asanas, pranayama, etcetera; and for the mind there is raga yoga and other yogas that are basically concerned with your mental attitudes.

Body and mind are one energy. For example, if you can control your breath when you are angry, the anger will die. If you can go on breathing rhythmically, anger cannot overpower you. In the same way, if you go on breathing rhythmically, sexual passion cannot overpower you. It will be there, but it will not become manifest. No one will know it is there. Not even you will be able to know it. So sex can be suppressed; anger can be suppressed. Through rhythmic breathing you can suppress them so much that you yourself will not even be aware of it. But the anger or sex will still be there. The body has suppressed it, but it remains inside, untouched.

One has to work with both the body and the mind. The body should be trained through yogic methodology, and the mind through awareness. You will require more awareness if you practice yoga because things will become more subtle. If you are angry, you can ordinarily become aware of it because it is so gross. But if you practice pranayama, you will need more awareness, more acute sensitivity to be aware of anger, because now the anger will become more subtle. The body is not cooperating with it so there will be no physical expression of it at all. If people practice awareness techniques and simultaneously practice yogic methods, they will know deeper realms of awareness. Otherwise they will be aware only of the gross. If you change the gross but do not change the subtle, you will be in a dilemma.

Now conflict will assert itself in a new way. Yoga is helpful, but it is only one part. The other part is what Buddha calls mindfulness. Practice yoga so that the body becomes rhythmic and cooperative with your inner movements, and simultaneously practice mindfulness. Be mindful of breathing. In yoga, you have to change the breathing process. In mindfulness, you have to be aware of the breathing as it is. Just be aware of it. If you can become aware of your breathing, then you can become aware of your thought process; otherwise not. Those who try to become aware of their thought process directly, will not be able to do it. It will be very arduous, tedious.

Breathing is the door to the mind. If you stop your breathing for a single moment, your thoughts will also stop. When breathing stops, the thought process stops. If your thinking is chaotic, your breathing will be chaotic. Breathing will simultaneously reflect your thought process. Buddha talks about anapanasati: the yoga of awareness of the incoming and outgoing breath. He says, ”Begin from here.” And that is the correct beginning. One should begin from breathing and never from the thought process itself. When you can feel the subtle movements of breath, only then will you be able to feel the subtle movements of thought.

Awareness of the thought process will change the quality of the mind; asanas and pranayama will change the quality of the body. Then the moment comes when your body and mind are one, withoutany conflict at all. When they are synchronized, you are neither body nor mind. For the first time, you know yourself as the Self. You transcend.

You can transcend only when there is no conflict. In this harmonious moment when body and mind are one, with no conflict, you transcend both.

You are neither. Now you are nothing in a sense: no-thing. You are simple consciousness. Not conscious of something, but just awareness itself. This awareness without being aware of anything, this consciousness without being conscious of anything, is the moment of explosion. Your potential becomes actual. You explode into a new realm: the ultimate. This ultimate is the concern of all religions.

There are so many ways to reach this ultimate. One may talk about kundalini or not; it is immaterial. Kundalini is only a word. You can use another word. But what is signified by the word ‘kundalini’ is bound to be there in some way or other as an inward flow of energy. This inward flow is the only revolution, the only freedom. Otherwise you will go on creating more hells, because the more you go outward the further off you are from yourself.

And the further off you are from yourself, the more ill and diseased you are. Kundalini is the original source of all life, but you are cut off from it in so many ways. Then you become an outsider to yourself and you do not know how to come back home. This coming back is the science of yoga. As far as human transformation is concerned, kundalini yoga is the subtlest science. You have asked why traditional methods are systematic and my method is chaotic.

Traditional methods are systematic because the people in earlier times for whom they were developed were different. Modern man is a very new phenomenon. No traditional method can be used exactly as it exists, because modern man never existed before. So in a way, all traditional methods have become irrelevant. For example, the body has changed so much. It is not as natural now as it was in the days when Patanjali developed his system of yoga.

It is absolutely different. It is so drugged that no traditional method can be helpful. In the past, medicine was not allowed to hatha yogis, absolutely not allowed, because chemical changes will not only make the methods difficult, but harmful. But the whole atmosphere is artificial now: the air, the water, society, living conditions. Nothing is natural. You are born in artificiality; you develop in it. So traditional methods will prove harmful today.

They will have to be changed according to the modern situation. Another thing: the quality of the mind has basically changed.

In Patanjali’s days, the center of the human personality was not the brain; it was the heart. And before that, it was not even the heart. It was still lower, near the navel. Hatha yoga developed methods which were useful, meaningful, to the person whose center of personality was the navel. Then the center became the heart. Only then could bhakti yoga be used. Bhakti yoga developed in the middle ages because that is when the center of personality changed from the navel to the heart.A method has to change according to the person to whom it is applied.

Now, not even bhakti yoga is relevant. The center has gone even further from the navel. Now, the center is the brain. That is why teachings like those of Krishnamurti have appeal. No method is needed, no technique is needed – only understanding. But if it is just a verbal understanding, just intellectual, nothing changes, nothing is transformed. It again becomes an accumulation of knowledge. I use chaotic methods rather than systematic ones because a chaotic method is very helpful in pushing the center down from the brain. The center cannot be pushed down through any systematic method because systemization is brain work.

Through a systematic method, the brain will be strengthened; more energy will be added to it. Through chaotic methods, the brain is nullified. It has nothing to do. The method is so chaotic that the center is automatically pushed from the brain to the heart. If you do my method of Dynamic Meditation vigorously, unsystematically, chaotically, your center moves to the heart. Then there is a catharsis. A catharsis is needed because your heart is so suppressed, due to your brain. Your brain has taken over so much of your being that it dominates you. There is no place for the heart, so the longings of the heart are suppressed.

You have never laughed heartily, never lived heartily, never done anything heartily. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make things mathematical, and the heart is suppressed. So firstly, a chaotic method is needed to push the center of consciousness from the brain toward the heart. Then catharsis is needed to unburden the heart, to throw off suppressions, to make the heart open. If the heart becomes light and unburdened, then the center of consciousness is pushed still lower; it comes to the navel. The navel is the source of vitality, the seed source from which everything else comes: the body and the mind and everything. I use this chaotic method very considerately.

Systematic methodology will not help now, because the brain will use it as its own instrument. Nor can just the chanting of bhajans help now, because the heart is so burdened that it cannot flower into real chanting. Chanting can only be an escape for it; prayer can only be an escape. The heart cannot flower into prayer because it is so overburdened with suppressions.

I have not seen a single person who can go deep into authentic prayer. Prayer is impossible because love itself has become impossible. Consciousness must be pushed down to the source, to the roots. Only then is there the possibility of transformation. So I use chaotic methods to push the consciousness downward from the brain.

Whenever you are in chaos, the brain stops working. For example, if you are driving a car and suddenly someone runs in front of you, you react so suddenly that it cannot be the work of the brain. The brain takes time. It thinks about what to do and what not to do. So whenever there is a possibility of an accident and you push the brake, you feel a sensation near your navel, as if it were your stomach that is reacting.

Your consciousness is pushed down to the navel because of the accident. If the accident could be calculated beforehand, the brain would be able to deal with it; but when you are in an accident, something unknown happens. Then you notice that your consciousness has moved to the navel. If you ask a Zen monk, ”From where do you think?” he puts his hands on his stomach. When Westerners came into contact with Japanese monks for the first time, they could not understand.”What nonsense! How can you think from your stomach?” But the Zen reply is meaningful. Consciousness can use any center of the body, and the center that is nearest to the original source is the navel.

The brain is furthest away from the original source, so if life energy is moving outward, the center of consciousness will become the brain. And if life energy is moving inward, ultimately the navel will become the center. Chaotic methods are needed to push the consciousness to its roots, because only from the roots is transformation possible. Otherwise you will go on verbalizing and there will be no transformation. It is not enough just to know what is right. You have to transform the roots; otherwise you will not change. When a person knows the right thing and cannot do anything about it, he becomes doubly tense. He understands, but he cannot do anything.

Understanding is meaningful only when it comes from the navel, from the roots. If you understand from the brain, it is not transforming. The ultimate cannot be known through the brain, because when you are functioning through the brain you are in conflict with the roots from which you have come. Your whole problem is that you have moved away from the navel. You have come from the navel and you will die through it. One has to come back to the roots. But coming back is difficult, arduous. Kundalini yoga is concerned with life energy and its inward flow.

It is concerned with techniques to bring the body and mind to a point where transcendence is possible. Then, everything is changed. The body is different; the mind is different; the living is different. It is just life. A bullock cart is useful, but it is no longer needed. Now you are driving a car, so you cannot use the technique that was used with the bullock cart.

It was useful with the bullock cart, but it is irrelevant with the car. Traditional methods have an appeal because they are so ancient and so many persons have achieved through them in the past. They may have become irrelevant to us, but they were not irrelevant to Buddha, Mahavira, Patanjali or Krishna. They were meaningful, helpful. The old methods may be meaningless now, but because Buddha achieved through them they have an appeal. The traditionalist feels: ”If Buddha achieved through these methods, why can’t I?” But we are in an altogether different situation now. The whole atmosphere, the whole thought-sphere, has changed. Every method is organic to a particular situation, to a particular mind, to a particular man.

The opposite extreme is that of Krishnamurti. He denies all methods. But to do that, he has to deny Buddha. It is the other aspect of the same coin. If you deny the methods then you have to deny Buddha, and if you do not deny Buddha then you cannot deny his methods. These are extremes. Extremes are always wrong. You cannot deny a falsehood through taking an extreme position to it, because the opposite extreme will still be a falsehood.

The truth always lies exactly in the middle. So to me, the fact that the old methods don’t work doesn’t mean that no method is useful. It only means that the methods themselves must change. Even no-method is a method. It is possible that to someone only no-method will be a method. A method is always true in relation to a particular person; it is never general.

When truths aregeneralized, they become false. So whenever anything is to be used or anything is to be said, it is always addressed to a particular human being: to his attention, to his mind, to him and no one else. This too has become a difficulty now. In the old days there was always a one-to-one relationship between a teacher and a disciple.

It was a personal relationship and a personal communication. Today it is always impersonal. One has to talk to a crowd, so one has to generalize. But generalized truths become false. Something is meaningful only to a particular person. I face this difficulty daily. If you come to me and ask me something, I answer you and no one else. Another time someone else asks me something, and I answer him and no one else. These two answers may even be contradictory, because the two persons who have asked may be contradictory. So if I am to help you, I must speak particularly to you. And if I speak particularly to each individual, I will have to say many conflicting things. Any person who has been talking in general can be consistent, but then the truth becomes false, because every statement that is true is bound to be addressed to a particular person. Of course, the truth is eternal – it is never new, never old – but truth is the realization, the end. The means are always relevant or irrelevant to a particular person, to a particular mind, to a particular attitude.

As I see the situation, modern man has changed so much that he needs new methods, new techniques. Chaotic methods will help the modern mind because the modern mind is, itself, chaotic. This chaos, this rebelliousness in modern man is, in fact, a rebellion of other things: of the body against the mind and against its suppressions. If we talk about it in yogic terms we can say that it is the rebellion of the heart center and the navel center against the brain.

These centers are against the brain because the brain has monopolized the whole territory of the human soul. This cannot be tolerated any further. That is why universities have become centers of rebellion. It is not accidental. If the whole society is thought of as an organic body, then the university is the head, the brain. Because of the rebelliousness of the modern mind, it is bound to be lenient toward loose and chaotic methods.

Dynamic Meditation will help to move the center of consciousness away from the brain. Then the person using it will never be rebellious, because the cause of rebellion becomes fulfilled. He will be at ease. So to me, meditation is not only a salvation for the individual, a transformation for the individual; it can also provide the groundwork for the transformation of the whole society, of the human being as such. Man will either have to commit suicide, or he will have to transform his energy.

This is answer is given by the Mystic “Osho”.

Existence is energy, the movement of energy in so many ways and so many forms. As far as human existence is concerned, this energy is kundalini energy.

Kundalini is the focused energy of the human body and human psyche. Energy can exist either manifested or unmanifested. It can remain in the seed, or it can come up in a manifested form.

Every energy is either in the seed or in the manifested form. Kundalini means your total potential, your total possibility. But it is a seed; it is the potential.

The ways to awaken kundalini are ways to make your potential actual. So first of all, kundalini is not something unique. It is only human energy as such. But ordinarily only a part of it is functioning, a very minute part. Even that part is not functioning harmoniously; it is in conflict.

That is the misery, the anguish. If your energy can function harmoniously then you feel bliss, but if it is in conflict – if it is antagonistic to itself – then you feel miserable. All misery means that your energy is in conflict, and all happiness, all bliss, means that your energy is in harmony. Why is the whole energy only potential, not actual? It is not needed as far as day-to-day life is concerned – it is not required.

Only that part becomes functional that is required, challenged. Dayto-day life is not a challenge to it, so only a very minute part becomes manifest. And even this small, manifested part is not harmonious because your day-to-day life is not integrated.

contradictory. Social requirements and personal requirements are in conflict. Society has its requirements; morality and religion have their requirements.

These conflicts have prevented man from being a harmonious whole. They have made man fragmentary. In the morning one thing is required; in the afternoon something else is required. Your wife requires something from you; your mother requires something quite contrary.

Then day-to-day life becomes a conflicting demand on you, and the minute part of your total energy that has become manifest is in conflict with itself. There is also another conflict. The part that has become manifest will always be in conflict with the part that has not yet become manifest; the actual will always be in conflict with the potential.

The potential will push itself to be manifested, and the actual will suppress it. To use psychological terms, the unconscious is always in conflict with the conscious. The conscious will try to dominate it, because it is always in danger of the unconscious manifesting itself.

The conscious is under control and the potential, the unconscious, is not. You can manage the conscious, but with an explosion of the unconscious you will be in insecurity. You will not be able to manage it. That is the fear of the conscious.

So this is the other conflict, greater and deeper than the first: the conflict between the conscious and the unconscious, between the energy that has become manifest and the energy that wants to be manifested. These two types of conflict are why you are not in harmony. And if you are not in harmony, your energy will become antagonistic to you. Energy needs movement, and movement is always from the unmanifest toward the manifest, from the seed toward the tree, from the dark toward the light. This movement is possible only if there is no suppression.

Otherwise the movement, the harmony, is destroyed and your energy becomes an enemy to you. You become a house divided against itself; you become a crowd. Then you are not one; you are many. This is the situation that exists as far as human beings are concerned. But this should not be. This is why there is ugliness and misery. Bliss and beauty can come only when your life energy is in movement, in easy movement, relaxed movement – unsuppressed, uninhibited; integrated, not fragmentary; not in conflict with itself, but one and organic.

When your energy comes to this harmonious unity, that is what is meant by kundalini. Kundalini is just a technical term for your whole energy when it is in unity, in movement, in harmony, without any conflict; when it is cooperative, complementary and organic. Then and there, there is a transformation – unique and unknown. When energies are in conflict, you want to relieve them. You feel at ease only when your conflicting energies are released, thrown off. But whenever you throw them off, your life energy, your vitality, moves downward, or outward.

The downward movement is the outward movement, and the upward movement is the inward movement. The more your energies go up, the more they go in; the more they go down, the more they move out. If you throw your conflicting energies out you will feel relief, but that is just like throwing your life away in bits and fragments, in instalments. It is suicidal. Unless our life energy becomes one and harmonious, and the flow becomes inward, we are suicidal. When you are throwing out energy you feel relieved, but the relief is bound to be momentary because you are a constant source of energy. Energy accumulates again and you will have to get rid of it there is a movement inward. That movement is endless. It becomes deeper and deeper, and the deeper it goes, the more blissful it becomes, the more ecstatic. So energy can have two possibilities.

The first is just a relief, a throwing off of energies which have become a burden to you, which you could not utilize and with which you could not be creative. This state of mind is anti-kundalini. The ordinary state of human beings is anti-kundalini. Energy moves from the center toward the periphery because that is the direction you are moving toward. Kundalini means just the opposite. Forces, energies, move from the periphery toward the center.

The movement inward, the center-oriented movement, is blissful, while the outward movement gives both happiness and misery. There will be momentary happiness and permanent misery. Happiness will come only in gaps. Only when you hope, only when you have expectations, is the gap there. The actual result is always misery. Happiness is in expectation, in hoping, in desiring, in dreaming. It is only that you are relieved of your burden; the happiness is totally negative. There is no happiness as such, but only the momentary absence of misery. That absence is taken as happiness. You are constantly creating new energies.

That is what is meant by life: the ability to go on creating the life force. The moment the capacity is gone, you are dead. This is the paradox: you go on creating energy and you don’t know what to do with it. When it is created you throw it off and when it is not created you feel miserable, ill. The moment the life force is not created, you feel ill; but when it is created, you again feel ill. The first illness is that of weakness, and the second illness is that of energy that has become a burden to you.

You are not able to harmonize it, to make it creative, to make it blissful. You have created it and now you don’t know what to do with it, so you just throw it off. Then you create more energy again. This is absurd, but this absurdity is what we ordinarily mean by human existence: constantly creating energy that constantly becomes burdensome and that you constantly have to relieve.

That is why sex has become so important, so significant because it is one of the greatest means to rid yourself of energy. If the society becomes affluent, you have more sources through which energy can be created. Then you become more sexual, because you have more tensions to relieve. There is a constant creating of energy and throwing out of energy. If one is intelligent enough, sensitive enough, then one will feel the absurdity of it, the whole meaninglessness of it.

Then one will feel the purposelessness of life. Are you just an instrument to create energy and throw it out? What is the meaning of this? What is the need to exist at all? Just to be an instrument in which energy is created and thrown out? So the more sensitive a person is, the more he feels the meaninglessness of life as we know it.Kundalini means to change this absurd situation into a meaningful one. The science of kundalini is one of the most subtle sciences.

The physical sciences are also concerned with energy, but with material energy not psychic energy. Yoga is concerned with psychic energy. It is a science of the metaphysical, of that which is transcendental. Just like the material energy that science is concerned with, this psychic energy can be creative or destructive. If it is not used, it becomes destructive; if it is used, it becomes creative. But it can also be used noncreatively.

The way to make it creative is first to understand that you should not realize only part of your potential. If one part is realized and the remaining, major portion of your potential is unrealized, it is not a situation that can be creative. The whole must be realized; your whole potential must be actualized. There are methods to realize the potential, to make it actual, to make it awake. It is sleeping, just like a snake. That is why it has been named kundalini: serpent power, a sleeping serpent. If you have ever seen a serpent sleeping, it is just like that.

It is coiled; there is no movement at all. But a serpent can stand up straight on its tail. It stands by its energy. That is why the serpent has been used symbolically. Your life energy is also coiled and asleep. But it can become straight; it can become awake, with its full potential actualized. Then you will be transformed. Life and death are only two states of energy. Life means energy functioning, and death means energy nonfunctioning.

Life means energy awake; death means energy gone again into sleep. So according to kundalini yoga, you are ordinarily only partially alive. The part of your energy that has become actualized is your life. The remaining part is so asleep that it is as if it were not. But it can be awakened. There are so many methods through which kundalini yoga tries to make the potential actual. For example, pranayama, breath control, is one of the methods to hammer the sleeping energy.

Through breath, the hammering is possible because breathing is the bridge between your vital energy – your prana, your original source of vitality – and your actual existence. It is the bridge between the potential and the actual. The moment you change your breathing system, your total energy system changes. When you are asleep your breathing changes. When you are awake your breathing changes. When you are angry your breathing is different; when you are in love your breathing is different; when you are in sexual passion your breathing is different. In every state of mind a particular quality of life force is there, so your breathing changes.

When you are angry you require more energy on the periphery. If you are in danger – if you have to attack or you have to defend yourself – more energy is needed on the periphery. The energy will rush from the center. Because a great quantity of energy is thrown off from your body during the sex act, you feel exhausted afterward. And after anger, too, you will feel exhausted. But after a loving moment, you will not feel exhausted. You will feel fresh. After prayer, you will feel fresh.

Why has the contrary happened? When you are in a loving moment, energy is not needed on the periphery because there is no danger. You are at ease, relaxed, so the energy flow is inward. When energy flows inward, you feel fresh.After deep breathing you will feel fresh, because energy is flowing inward. When energy flows inward you feel vitalized, fulfilled; you feel a well-being. Another thing to notice: when energy is going inward, your breath will begin to have a different quality. It will be relaxed, rhythmic, harmonious.

There will be moments when you will not feel it at all, when you will feel as if it has stopped. It becomes so subtle! Because energy is not needed, the breath stops. In samadhi, in ecstasy, one feels that the breath has stopped completely. No outward flow of energy is needed, so the breath is unnecessary. Through pranayama this potential energy within you is systematically awakened. It can also be tapped through asanas, yogic postures, because your body is connected at every point to the source of energy. So every posture has a corresponding effect on the energy source.

The posture that Buddha used is called padmasan, the lotus posture. It is one of the postures in which the least amount of energy is needed. If you sit up straight, sitting is so balanced that you become one with the earth. There is no gravitational pull. And if your hands and feet are in such a position that a closed circuit is created, the life electricity will flow in a circuit. Buddha’s posture is a round posture. Energy becomes circular; it is not thrown out.

Energy always moves out through the fingers, hands or feet. But through a round shape, energy cannot flow out. That is why women are more resistant to illness than men, and why they live longer. The rounder the body is, the less energy flows outward. Women are not so exhausted after the sex act because the shape of their sexual organ is round and absorbing. Men will be more exhausted. Because of the shape of their sexual organ, more energy is thrown out. Not only biological energy, but psychic energy also. All the energy outlets are joined together in padmasan, so no energy can move outward. Both feet are crossed, the hands touch the feet and the feet touch the sex center. And the posture is so erect that there is no gravitational pull. In this posture, one can forget the body completely because life energy is not flowing outward.

The eyes are also to be closed or half closed and the eyeballs still, because eyes are also a great outlet for energy. Even in dreams you throw out much energy through eye movements. In fact, one way to know whether a person is dreaming or not is to put your fingers on his eyes. If they are moving, then he is dreaming. Awaken him, and you will find he was dreaming. If the eyeballs are not moving, then he is in deep, dreamless sleep, sushupti. All energy is going inward and nothing is going outward. Asanas, pranayama – there are so many methods through which energies can be made to flow inward. When they flow inward they become one, because at the center there cannot be more than one. So the more energy goes inward, the more harmony there is. Conflicts drop. In the center there is no conflict. There is an organic unity of the whole.

That is why bliss is felt. Another thing: asanas and pranayama are bodily helps. They are important, but they are only physical helps. If your mind is in conflict then they will not be of much help, because body and mind are not two things really. They are two parts of one thing. You are not body and mind; you are body/mind. You are psycho/somatic or somato/psychic. We talk about the body as one thing and the mind as something different, but body and mind are two poles of one energy. The body is gross and the mind is subtle, but the energy is the same. One has to work from both polarities. For the body there is hatha yoga: asanas, pranayama, etcetera; and for the mind there is raga yoga and other yogas that are basically concerned with your mental attitudes.

Body and mind are one energy. For example, if you can control your breath when you are angry, the anger will die. If you can go on breathing rhythmically, anger cannot overpower you. In the same way, if you go on breathing rhythmically, sexual passion cannot overpower you. It will be there, but it will not become manifest. No one will know it is there. Not even you will be able to know it. So sex can be suppressed; anger can be suppressed. Through rhythmic breathing you can suppress them so much that you yourself will not even be aware of it. But the anger or sex will still be there. The body has suppressed it, but it remains inside, untouched.

One has to work with both the body and the mind. The body should be trained through yogic methodology, and the mind through awareness. You will require more awareness if you practice yoga because things will become more subtle. If you are angry, you can ordinarily become aware of it because it is so gross. But if you practice pranayama, you will need more awareness, more acute sensitivity to be aware of anger, because now the anger will become more subtle. The body is not cooperating with it so there will be no physical expression of it at all. If people practice awareness techniques and simultaneously practice yogic methods, they will know deeper realms of awareness. Otherwise they will be aware only of the gross. If you change the gross but do not change the subtle, you will be in a dilemma.

Now conflict will assert itself in a new way. Yoga is helpful, but it is only one part. The other part is what Buddha calls mindfulness. Practice yoga so that the body becomes rhythmic and cooperative with your inner movements, and simultaneously practice mindfulness. Be mindful of breathing. In yoga, you have to change the breathing process. In mindfulness, you have to be aware of the breathing as it is. Just be aware of it. If you can become aware of your breathing, then you can become aware of your thought process; otherwise not. Those who try to become aware of their thought process directly, will not be able to do it. It will be very arduous, tedious.

Breathing is the door to the mind. If you stop your breathing for a single moment, your thoughts will also stop. When breathing stops, the thought process stops. If your thinking is chaotic, your breathing will be chaotic. Breathing will simultaneously reflect your thought process. Buddha talks about anapanasati: the yoga of awareness of the incoming and outgoing breath. He says, ”Begin from here.” And that is the correct beginning. One should begin from breathing and never from the thought process itself. When you can feel the subtle movements of breath, only then will you be able to feel the subtle movements of thought.

Awareness of the thought process will change the quality of the mind; asanas and pranayama will change the quality of the body. Then the moment comes when your body and mind are one, withoutany conflict at all. When they are synchronized, you are neither body nor mind. For the first time, you know yourself as the Self. You transcend.

You can transcend only when there is no conflict. In this harmonious moment when body and mind are one, with no conflict, you transcend both.

You are neither. Now you are nothing in a sense: no-thing. You are simple consciousness. Not conscious of something, but just awareness itself. This awareness without being aware of anything, this consciousness without being conscious of anything, is the moment of explosion. Your potential becomes actual. You explode into a new realm: the ultimate. This ultimate is the concern of all religions.

There are so many ways to reach this ultimate. One may talk about kundalini or not; it is immaterial. Kundalini is only a word. You can use another word. But what is signified by the word ‘kundalini’ is bound to be there in some way or other as an inward flow of energy. This inward flow is the only revolution, the only freedom. Otherwise you will go on creating more hells, because the more you go outward the further off you are from yourself.

And the further off you are from yourself, the more ill and diseased you are. Kundalini is the original source of all life, but you are cut off from it in so many ways. Then you become an outsider to yourself and you do not know how to come back home. This coming back is the science of yoga. As far as human transformation is concerned, kundalini yoga is the subtlest science. You have asked why traditional methods are systematic and my method is chaotic.

Traditional methods are systematic because the people in earlier times for whom they were developed were different. Modern man is a very new phenomenon. No traditional method can be used exactly as it exists, because modern man never existed before. So in a way, all traditional methods have become irrelevant. For example, the body has changed so much. It is not as natural now as it was in the days when Patanjali developed his system of yoga.

It is absolutely different. It is so drugged that no traditional method can be helpful. In the past, medicine was not allowed to hatha yogis, absolutely not allowed, because chemical changes will not only make the methods difficult, but harmful. But the whole atmosphere is artificial now: the air, the water, society, living conditions. Nothing is natural. You are born in artificiality; you develop in it. So traditional methods will prove harmful today.

They will have to be changed according to the modern situation. Another thing: the quality of the mind has basically changed.

In Patanjali’s days, the center of the human personality was not the brain; it was the heart. And before that, it was not even the heart. It was still lower, near the navel. Hatha yoga developed methods which were useful, meaningful, to the person whose center of personality was the navel. Then the center became the heart. Only then could bhakti yoga be used. Bhakti yoga developed in the middle ages because that is when the center of personality changed from the navel to the heart.A method has to change according to the person to whom it is applied.

Now, not even bhakti yoga is relevant. The center has gone even further from the navel. Now, the center is the brain. That is why teachings like those of Krishnamurti have appeal. No method is needed, no technique is needed – only understanding. But if it is just a verbal understanding, just intellectual, nothing changes, nothing is transformed. It again becomes an accumulation of knowledge. I use chaotic methods rather than systematic ones because a chaotic method is very helpful in pushing the center down from the brain. The center cannot be pushed down through any systematic method because systemization is brain work.

Through a systematic method, the brain will be strengthened; more energy will be added to it. Through chaotic methods, the brain is nullified. It has nothing to do. The method is so chaotic that the center is automatically pushed from the brain to the heart. If you do my method of Dynamic Meditation vigorously, unsystematically, chaotically, your center moves to the heart. Then there is a catharsis. A catharsis is needed because your heart is so suppressed, due to your brain. Your brain has taken over so much of your being that it dominates you. There is no place for the heart, so the longings of the heart are suppressed.

You have never laughed heartily, never lived heartily, never done anything heartily. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make things mathematical, and the heart is suppressed. So firstly, a chaotic method is needed to push the center of consciousness from the brain toward the heart. Then catharsis is needed to unburden the heart, to throw off suppressions, to make the heart open. If the heart becomes light and unburdened, then the center of consciousness is pushed still lower; it comes to the navel. The navel is the source of vitality, the seed source from which everything else comes: the body and the mind and everything. I use this chaotic method very considerately.

Systematic methodology will not help now, because the brain will use it as its own instrument. Nor can just the chanting of bhajans help now, because the heart is so burdened that it cannot flower into real chanting. Chanting can only be an escape for it; prayer can only be an escape. The heart cannot flower into prayer because it is so overburdened with suppressions.

I have not seen a single person who can go deep into authentic prayer. Prayer is impossible because love itself has become impossible. Consciousness must be pushed down to the source, to the roots. Only then is there the possibility of transformation. So I use chaotic methods to push the consciousness downward from the brain.

Whenever you are in chaos, the brain stops working. For example, if you are driving a car and suddenly someone runs in front of you, you react so suddenly that it cannot be the work of the brain. The brain takes time. It thinks about what to do and what not to do. So whenever there is a possibility of an accident and you push the brake, you feel a sensation near your navel, as if it were your stomach that is reacting.

Your consciousness is pushed down to the navel because of the accident. If the accident could be calculated beforehand, the brain would be able to deal with it; but when you are in an accident, something unknown happens. Then you notice that your consciousness has moved to the navel. If you ask a Zen monk, ”From where do you think?” he puts his hands on his stomach. When Westerners came into contact with Japanese monks for the first time, they could not understand.”What nonsense! How can you think from your stomach?” But the Zen reply is meaningful. Consciousness can use any center of the body, and the center that is nearest to the original source is the navel.

The brain is furthest away from the original source, so if life energy is moving outward, the center of consciousness will become the brain. And if life energy is moving inward, ultimately the navel will become the center. Chaotic methods are needed to push the consciousness to its roots, because only from the roots is transformation possible. Otherwise you will go on verbalizing and there will be no transformation. It is not enough just to know what is right. You have to transform the roots; otherwise you will not change. When a person knows the right thing and cannot do anything about it, he becomes doubly tense. He understands, but he cannot do anything.

Understanding is meaningful only when it comes from the navel, from the roots. If you understand from the brain, it is not transforming. The ultimate cannot be known through the brain, because when you are functioning through the brain you are in conflict with the roots from which you have come. Your whole problem is that you have moved away from the navel. You have come from the navel and you will die through it. One has to come back to the roots. But coming back is difficult, arduous. Kundalini yoga is concerned with life energy and its inward flow.

It is concerned with techniques to bring the body and mind to a point where transcendence is possible. Then, everything is changed. The body is different; the mind is different; the living is different. It is just life. A bullock cart is useful, but it is no longer needed. Now you are driving a car, so you cannot use the technique that was used with the bullock cart.

It was useful with the bullock cart, but it is irrelevant with the car. Traditional methods have an appeal because they are so ancient and so many persons have achieved through them in the past. They may have become irrelevant to us, but they were not irrelevant to Buddha, Mahavira, Patanjali or Krishna. They were meaningful, helpful. The old methods may be meaningless now, but because Buddha achieved through them they have an appeal. The traditionalist feels: ”If Buddha achieved through these methods, why can’t I?” But we are in an altogether different situation now. The whole atmosphere, the whole thought-sphere, has changed. Every method is organic to a particular situation, to a particular mind, to a particular man.

The opposite extreme is that of Krishnamurti. He denies all methods. But to do that, he has to deny Buddha. It is the other aspect of the same coin. If you deny the methods then you have to deny Buddha, and if you do not deny Buddha then you cannot deny his methods. These are extremes. Extremes are always wrong. You cannot deny a falsehood through taking an extreme position to it, because the opposite extreme will still be a falsehood.

The truth always lies exactly in the middle. So to me, the fact that the old methods don’t work doesn’t mean that no method is useful. It only means that the methods themselves must change. Even no-method is a method. It is possible that to someone only no-method will be a method. A method is always true in relation to a particular person; it is never general.

When truths aregeneralized, they become false. So whenever anything is to be used or anything is to be said, it is always addressed to a particular human being: to his attention, to his mind, to him and no one else. This too has become a difficulty now. In the old days there was always a one-to-one relationship between a teacher and a disciple.

It was a personal relationship and a personal communication. Today it is always impersonal. One has to talk to a crowd, so one has to generalize. But generalized truths become false. Something is meaningful only to a particular person. I face this difficulty daily. If you come to me and ask me something, I answer you and no one else. Another time someone else asks me something, and I answer him and no one else. These two answers may even be contradictory, because the two persons who have asked may be contradictory. So if I am to help you, I must speak particularly to you. And if I speak particularly to each individual, I will have to say many conflicting things. Any person who has been talking in general can be consistent, but then the truth becomes false, because every statement that is true is bound to be addressed to a particular person. Of course, the truth is eternal – it is never new, never old – but truth is the realization, the end. The means are always relevant or irrelevant to a particular person, to a particular mind, to a particular attitude.

As I see the situation, modern man has changed so much that he needs new methods, new techniques. Chaotic methods will help the modern mind because the modern mind is, itself, chaotic. This chaos, this rebelliousness in modern man is, in fact, a rebellion of other things: of the body against the mind and against its suppressions. If we talk about it in yogic terms we can say that it is the rebellion of the heart center and the navel center against the brain.

These centers are against the brain because the brain has monopolized the whole territory of the human soul. This cannot be tolerated any further. That is why universities have become centers of rebellion. It is not accidental. If the whole society is thought of as an organic body, then the university is the head, the brain. Because of the rebelliousness of the modern mind, it is bound to be lenient toward loose and chaotic methods.

Dynamic Meditation will help to move the center of consciousness away from the brain. Then the person using it will never be rebellious, because the cause of rebellion becomes fulfilled. He will be at ease. So to me, meditation is not only a salvation for the individual, a transformation for the individual; it can also provide the groundwork for the transformation of the whole society, of the human being as such. Man will either have to commit suicide, or he will have to transform his energy.

This is answer is given by the Mystic “Osho”.

One reason is that any knowledge about kundalini or about esoteric paths of bioenergy – the inner paths of elan vital – is generalized. It differs from individual to individual; the root is not going to be the same. With A it will be different, with B it will be different, with C it will be different. Your inner life has an individuality, so when you acquire something through theoretical knowledge it is not going to help – it may hinder – because it is not about you. It cannot be about you. You will only know about yourself when you go within. There are chakras, but the number differs with each individual. One may have seven, one may have nine; one may have more, one may have less. That is the reason why so many different traditions have developed. Buddhists talk of nine chakras, Hindus talk of seven, Tibetans talk of four – and they are all right! The root of kundalini, the passage through which kundalini passes, is also different with each individual. The more you go in, the more individual you are. For instance, in your body your face is the most individual part, and in the face the eyes are even more individual. The face is more alive than any other part of the body; that is why it takes on an individuality. You may not have noticed that with a particular age – particularly with sexual maturity – your face begins to assume a shape that will continue, more or less, for the whole life. Before sexual maturity the face changes much, but with sexual maturity your individuality is fixed and given a pattern, and now the face will be more or less the same. The eyes are even more alive than the face, and they are so individual that every moment they change. Unless one attains enlightenment, the eyes are never fixed. Enlightenment is another kind of maturity. With sexual maturity the face becomes fixed, but there is another maturity where the eyes become fixed. You cannot see any change in Buddha’s eyes: his body will grow old, he will die, but his eyes will continue to be the same. That has been one of the indications. When someone attains nirvana, the eyes are the only door by which outsiders can know whether the man has really attained it. Now the eyes never change. Everything changes, but the eyes remain the same. Eyes are expressive of the inner world. But kundalini is still deeper. No theoretical knowledge is helpful. When you have some theoretical knowledge, you begin to impose it on yourself. You begin to visualize things to be the way you have been taught, but they may not correspond to your individual situation. Then much confusion is created. One has to feel the chakras, not know about them. You have to feel; you have to send feelers inside yourself. Only when you feel your chakras, and your kundalini and its passage, is it helpful; otherwise, it is not helpful. In fact, knowledge has been very destructive as far as the inner world is concerned. The more knowledge gained, the less the possibility of feeling the real, the authentic, things. You begin to impose what you know upon yourself. If someone says, ”Here is the chakra, here is the center,” then you begin to visualize your chakra at that spot; and it may not be there at all. Then you will create imaginary chakras. You can create; the mind has the capacity. You can create imaginary chakras, and then, because of your imagination, a flow will begin that will not be kundalini but will be simple imagination – a completely illusory, dreamlike phenomenon. Once you can visualize centers and can create an imaginary kundalini, then you can create everything. Then imaginary experiences will follow, and you will develop a very false world inside you. The world that is without is illusory, but not so illusory as the one you can create inside. All that is within is not necessarily real or true, because imagination is also within, dreams are also within. The mind has a faculty – a very powerful faculty – to dream, to create illusions, to project. That is why it is good to proceed in meditation completely unaware of kundalini, of chakras. If you stumble upon them, then it is good. You may come to feel something; only then, ask. You may begin to feel a chakra working, but let the feeling come first. You may feel energy rising up, but let the feeling come first. Do not imagine, do not think about it, do not make any intellectual effort to understand beforehand; no pre-notion is needed. Not only is it not needed, but it is positively harmful. And another thing: kundalini and the chakras do not belong to your anatomy, to your physiology. Chakras and kundalini belong to your subtle body, to your sukshmasharira, not to this body, the gross body. Of course, there are corresponding spots. The chakras are part of your sukshmasharira, but your physiology and anatomy have spots that correspond to them. If you feel an inner chakra, only then can you feel the corresponding spot; otherwise you can dissect the whole body, but nothing like chakras will be found. All the talk and all the so-called evidence and all the scientific claims that your gross body has something like kundalini and chakras is nonsense, absolute nonsense. There are corresponding spots, but those spots can only be felt when you feel the real chakras. With the dissection of your gross body nothing can be found; there is nothing. So the question is not of anatomy. One thing more: it is not necessary to pass through chakras. It is not necessary; one can just bypass them. It is also not necessary that you will feel kundalini before enlightenment. The phenomenon is very different from what you may think. Kundalini is not felt because it is rising; kundalini is only felt if you do not have a very clear passage. If the passage is completely clear-cut, then the energy flows but you cannot feel it. You feel it when there is something there that resists the flow. If the energy flows upward and you have blocks in the passage, only then do you feel it. So the person who feels more kundalini is really blocked: there are many blocks in the passage, so the kundalini cannot flow. When there is resistance, then the kundalini is felt. You cannot feel energy directly unless there is resistance. If I move my hand and there is no resistance, the movement will not be felt. The movement is felt because the air resists, but it is not felt as much as when a stone resists; then I will feel the movement more. And in a vacuum I will not feel the movement at all – so it is relative. Buddha never talked about kundalini. It is not that there was no kundalini in his body, but the passage was so clear that there was no resistance. Thus, he never felt it. Mahavira never talked about kundalini. Because of this, a very false notion was created, and then Jainas, who followed Mahavira, thought that kundalini was all nonsense, that there was nothing like it. Thus, because Mahavira himself did not feel kundalini, twenty-five centuries of Jaina tradition has continued to deny it, claiming it does not exist. But Mahavira’s reason for not talking about it was very different. Because there were no blocks in his body, he never felt it. So it is not necessary for you to feel kundalini. You may not feel it at all. And if you do not feel kundalini, then you will bypass chakras, because the working of the chakras is needed only to break the blocks. Otherwise, they are not needed. When there is a block, and the kundalini is blocked, then the nearby chakra begins to move because of the blocked kundalini. It becomes dynamic. The chakra begins to move because of the blocked kundalini and it moves so fast that, because of the movement, a particular energy is created which breaks the block. If the passage is clear no chakra is needed, and you will never feel anything. Really, the existence of chakras is just to help you. If kundalini is blocked, then the help is just nearby. Some chakra will take the energy that is being blocked. If the energy cannot move further it will fall back. Before it falls back the chakra will absorb the energy completely, and the kundalini will move in the chakra. Through movement the energy becomes more vital, it becomes more alive, and when it again comes to the block it can break it. So it is just an arrangement, a help. If kundalini moves and there are no blocks, then you will never feel any chakras. That is why someone may feel nine chakras, someone else may feel ten chakras, and someone else may feel only three or four, or one, or none. It depends. In actual fact, there are infinite chakras and at every movement, every step of the kundalini, a chakra is by the side to help. If the help is needed, it can be given. That is why I insist that a theoretical acquaintance is not helpful. And meditation as such is not really concerned with kundalini at all. If kundalini comes, that is another thing – but meditation has nothing to do with it. Meditation can be explained without even mentioning kundalini; there is no need. And by mentioning kundalini it creates even more conflicts to explain the thing. Meditation can be explained directly; you need not bother about chakras, you begin with meditation. If the passage is blocked you may come to feel kundalini, and chakras will be there, but that is completely nonvoluntary. You must remember that it is nonvoluntary; your volition is not needed at all. The deeper the path, the more nonvoluntary. I can move my hand – this is a voluntary path – but I cannot move my blood. I can try. Years and years of training can make a person capable of making blood circulation voluntary – hatha yoga can do that; it has been done, it is not impossible, but it is futile. Thirty years of training just to control the movement of the blood is meaningless and stupid because with the control comes nothing. The blood circulation is nonvoluntary; your will is not needed. You take food and the moment it goes in, your will is not needed: the body machinery, the body mechanism, has taken over, and it goes on doing whatever is needed. Your sleep is not voluntary, your birth is not voluntary, your death is not voluntary. These are nonvoluntary mechanisms. Kundalini is still deeper, deeper than your death, deeper than your birth, deeper than your blood, because kundalini is a circulation of your second body. Blood is the circulation of your physiological body; kundalini is the circulation of your etheric body. It is absolutely nonvoluntary; even a hatha yogi cannot do anything with it voluntarily. One has to go into meditation, then the energy begins to move. The part that is to be done by you is meditation. If you are deep in it, then the inner energy begins to move upward, and you will feel the change of flow. It will be felt in so many ways: even physiologically the change can be known. For example, ordinarily, biologically, it is a sign of good health for your feet to be warm and your head to be cool. Biologically it is a healthy sign. When the reverse occurs – the feet become cool and the head becomes warm – a person is ill. But the same thing happens when the kundalini flows upward: the feet become cool. Really, the warmth in the feet is nothing but sex energy flowing downward. The moment the vital energy, the kundalini, begins to flow upward, sex energy follows. It begins to flow upward: the feet become cool and the head becomes warm. Biologically it is better for the feet to be warmer than the head, but spiritually it is healthier for the feet to be cooler because this is a sign that the energy is flowing upward. Many diseases may begin to occur once the energy begins to flow upward, because biologically you have disturbed the whole organism. Buddha died very ill, Mahavira died very ill, Raman Maharshi died with cancer; Ramakrishna died with cancer. And the reason is that the whole biological system is disturbed. Many other reasons are given, but they are nonsense. Jainas have created many stories because they could not conceive that Mahavira could have been ill. For me, the contrary is the case: I cannot conceive how he could have been completely healthy. He couldn’t be, because this was going to be his last birth, and the whole biological system had to break down. A system that had been continuous for millennia had to break down. He could not be healthy; in the end he had to be very ill. And he was! But it was very difficult for his followers to conceive that Mahavira was ill. There was only one explanation for illness in those days. If you were suffering from a particular disease, it meant your karmas your past deeds, had been bad. If Mahavira was suffering from a disease, then it would have meant that he was still under his karmic influence. This could not be so, so an ingenious story was invented: that Goshalak, a competitor of Mahavira, was using evil forces against him. But this was not the case at all. The biological, natural flow is downward; the spiritual flow is upward. And the whole organism is meant for the downward flow. You may begin to feel many changes in the body, but the first changes will come in the subtle body. Meditation is just the means to create a bridge from the gross to the subtle. When I say ”meditation” I mean only that: if you can jump out of your gross body – that is what is meant by meditation. But to take this jump you will need the help of your gross body; you will have to use it as a stepping stone. From any extreme point, you can take the jump. Fasting has been used to take one to an extreme. With long, continuous fasting, you come to the verge. The human body can ordinarily sustain a ninety-day fast, but then, the moment the body is completely exhausted, the moment the reservoir that has been accumulated for emergencies has been depleted – at that moment, one of two things is possible. If you do nothing, death may occur, but if you use this moment for meditation, the jump may occur. If you do not do anything, if you just go on fasting, death may occur. Then it will be a suicide. Mahavira, who experimented more deeply with fasting than anyone else in the whole history of human evolution, is the only man who allowed his followers a spiritual suicide. He called it santhara: that on-the-verge point when both things are possible. In a single moment, you may either die or you can jump. If you use some technique, you can jump; then, Mahavira says, it is not a suicide, but a very great spiritual explosion. Mahavira was the only man – the only one – who has said that if you have the courage, even suicide can be used for your spiritual progress. From any verge point the jump is possible. Sufis have used dancing. A moment comes in dancing when you begin to feel unearthly. With a real Sufi dancer, even the audience begins to feel unearthly. Through body movements, rhythmic movements, the dancer soon begins to feel that he is different from the body, separate from the body. One has to begin the movement but soon a nonvoluntary mechanism of the body takes over. You begin, but if the end is also yours then the dancing was just ordinary dancing. But if you begin and by the end you feel as if somewhere in between the dancing was taken over by a nonvoluntary mechanism, then it has become a dervish dance. You move so fast that the body shakes and becomes nonvoluntary. That is the point where you can go crazy or you can jump. You may go mad, because a nonvoluntary mechanism has taken over your body movement. It is beyond your control: you cannot do anything. You may just go mad and never be able to come back again from this nonvoluntary movement. This is the point where there is either madness or, if you know the technique to jump, meditation. That is why Sufis have always been known as mad people. They have been known as mad! Ordinarily, they are mad. There is also a sect in Bengal that is just like the Sufis: Baul fakirs. They move from village to village dancing and singing. The very word baul means bawla, mad. They are people who are mad. Madness happens many times, but if you know the technique, then meditation can happen. It always happens on the verge; that is why mystics have always used the term ”the sword’s edge.” Either madness may happen or meditation may happen, and every method uses your body as a sword’s edge from which either one or the other is possible. Then what is the technique to jump into meditation? I have talked about two: fasting and dancing. All techniques of meditation are to push you to the verge where you can take the jump, but the jump itself can be taken only through a very simple, very nonmethodical method. If you can be aware at the very moment when fasting has led you to the precipice of death, if you can be aware at the moment when death is going to set in, if you can be aware, then there is no death. And not only is there no death this time, then there is no death forever. You have jumped! When the moment is so intense that you know in one second it will be beyond you, when you know that should a second be lost you will not be able to come back again, be aware – and then jump. Awareness is the method. And because awareness is the method, zen people say that there is no method. Awareness is not a method at all. That is why Krishnamurti will go on saying that there is no method. Of course, awareness is not really a method at all; but I still call it a method because if you cannot be aware, then at the exact moment that the jump is possible, you will be lost. So if someone says, ”Only awareness will do,” that may be true for one out of ten thousand people, but that one will be one who has come to the point where either madness is possible or death is possible. He has come to that point anyway. And with the others, the majority of people, just talking about awareness will not do. First, they must be trained. To be aware in ordinary situations will not do. And you cannot be aware in ordinary situations. The mind’s stupidity has such a long history – the lethargy of it, the laziness of it, the unconsciousness of it, has been going on for so long, that just by hearing Krishnamurti or me or anyone else you can never hope to be aware. And it will be difficult to be aware of those same things that you have done without awareness so many times. You have come to your office completely unaware that you have been moving: you have turned, you have walked, you have opened the door. For your whole life you have been doing it. Now it has become a nonvoluntary mechanism; it has been removed from your consciousness completely. Then Krishnamurti says, ”Be aware when you are walking.” But you have been walking without ever being aware. The habit has set in so deeply, it has become a part of the bones and blood; now it is very difficult. You can only be aware in emergencies, in sudden emergencies. Someone puts a gun on your chest: you can be aware because it is a situation that you have never practiced. But if you are familiar with the situation, you will not be aware at all. Fasting is to create an emergency, and such an emergency as you have never known. So one who has been practicing fasting may not be helped through it; he will need longer periods to fast. Or, if you have never danced, you can be helped easily through dancing; but if you are an expert dancer, Sufi dervish dancing will not do. It will not do at all because you are so perfect, so efficient, and efficiency means that the thing is now being done by the nonvoluntary part of the mind. Efficiency always means that. That is why one hundred and twelve methods of meditation have been developed. One may not do for you; another may. And the one which will be most helpful is the one which is completely unknown to you. If you have never been trained in a particular method at all, then an emergency is created very soon. And in that emergency, be aware! So be concerned with meditation and not with kundalini. And when you are aware, things will begin to happen in you. For the first time you will become aware of an inner world that is greater, vaster, more extensive than the universe; energies unknown, completely unknown, will begin to flow in you. Phenomena never heard of, never imagined or dreamed of, will begin to happen. But with each person they differ, so it is good not to talk about them. They differ; that is why the old traditional emphasis on a guru is there. Scriptures will not do; only the guru will do. And gurus have always been against the scriptures, although the scriptures talk about gurus and praise gurus. The very concept of the guru is in opposition to the scriptures. The well known proverb Guru bin gnananahee – without the guru there will be no knowledge – does not really mean that without the guru there will be no knowledge. It means that with only the scriptures there is no knowledge. A living guru is needed, not a dead book. A book cannot know what type of individual you are. A book is always generalized, it cannot be particular; that is impossible, the very possibility is not there. Only a living person can be aware of your needs, of things which are going to happen to you. This is really very paradoxical: scriptures talk about gurus – Guru bin gnananahee, no knowledge without the guru – but gurus are symbolically against scriptures. The very concept that the guru will give you knowledge does not mean that he will provide knowledge. Rather, it means that only a living person can be of any help. Why? Because he can know the individual. No book can know the individual. Books are meant for no one in particular, they are meant for everyone. And when a method is to be given, your individuality has to be taken into account very, very exactly, scientifically. This knowledge that the guru has to transfer has always been transferred secretly, privately, from guru to disciple. Why the secrecy? Secrecy is the only means for transference of knowledge. The disciple is ordered not to talk about it to anyone. The mind wants to talk. If you know something, it is very difficult to keep it a secret; this is one of the most difficult things, but it has always been the way of the gurus, the way of the teachers. They will give you something with the condition that it is not to be talked about. Why – why this secrecy? So many people say that truth needs no secrecy, it needs no privacy. This is nonsense. Truth needs more privacy than nontruth because it can prove fatal to just anybody; it can prove dangerous. It has been given to a particular individual; it is meant only for him and for no one else. He should not give it to anyone else until he himself comes to the point where his individuality is lost. This must be understood. A guru is a person whose individuality is lost. Only then can he look deeply into your individuality. If he himself is an individual, he can interpret you, but he will never be able to know you. For example, if I am here and I say something about you, it is I who am talking about you. It is not about you; rather, it is about me. I cannot help you because I cannot really know you at all. Whenever I know you, it is in a roundabout way, by knowing myself. This point of my being here must disappear. I must be just an absence. Only then can I go deep inside you without any interpretation; only then can I know you as you are, not according to me. And only then can I help. Hence, the secrecy. So it is good not to talk about kundalini and chakras. Only meditation is to be taught and to be listened to and to be understood. Then, everything else will just follow. Kundalini is not itself a life force. Rather, it is a particular passage for the life force, a way. But the life force can take other ways also, so it is not necessary to pass through kundalini. It is possible that one may reach enlightenment without passing through kundalini – but kundalini is the easiest passage, the shortest one. If the life force passes through kundalini, then the brahma randhra will be the terminal point. But if the life force takes another route – and infinite routes are possible – then the brahma randhra will not be the terminus. So the flowering of the brahma randhra is only a possibility, a potentiality, if the life force passes through kundalini. There are yogas that will not even mention kundalini; then there is nothing like the brahma randhra. But this is the easiest route, so ordinarily ninety percent of the persons who realize pass through kundalini. Kundalini and the chakras are not located in the physical body. They belong to the etheric body, but they have corresponding points within the physical body. It is like when you feel love and you put your hand on your heart. Nothing like ”love” is there, but your heart, your physical heart, is a corresponding point. When you put your hand on your heart, you are putting your hand at the chakra that belongs to the etheric body, and this point is approximately parallel to your physical heart. Kundalini is part of the etheric body, so whatever you achieve as progress on the path of kundalini does not die with your physical body; it goes with you. Whatever is achieved will remain with you because it is not a part of your physical body. If it were a part of your physical body, then with each death it would be lost and you would have to begin from the very beginning. But if someone reaches the third chakra, this progress will remain with him in his next life. It will go with him; it is stored in the etheric body. When I say that the life energy goes through kundalini, I mean kundalini as a passage – the whole passage connecting the seven chakras. These chakras are not in the physical body, so everything that can be said about kundalini is being said about the etheric body.When the life force passes through kundalini, the chakras will begin to vibrate and flower. The moment energy comes to them, they become alive. It is just like when hydro-electricity is created; the force and pressure of the water rotate the dynamo. If there were no pressure and no water, the dynamo would stop; it would not work. The dynamo rotates because of the pressure. In the same way, the chakras are there, but they are dead until the moment the life force penetrates them; only then do they begin to rotate. That is why they are called chakras. ”Chakra” is not exactly translated by the word center, because center means something static and chakra means something moving. So the right translation would be wheel, not center; or, a dynamic center, or a rotating center, a moving center. Chakras are centers until the life force comes to them. The moment the life force comes to them, they begin to be chakras. Now they are not centers, they are wheels, rotating. And each wheel, by rotating, creates a new sort of energy. This energy is used again to rotate further chakras. So as the life force passes through each chakra, it becomes more vital, more alive. Kundalini is the passage through which the life force moves. The life force is located in the sex center, stored in the sex center, the muladhar. It can be used as sex energy; then it generates a particular life, a biological life. Then too it creates movements, then too it creates more energy; but this is biological. If this same energy moves upward, the passage of kundalini is opened. The sex center, the muladhar, is the first to open. It can open either toward biological generation or it can open toward spiritual generation. The muladhar has two openings, a lower one and an upper one. In the passage of kundalini, the highest center is the sahasrar, of which the brahma randhra is the middle point. The opening of the brahma randhra is one way toward self realization. Other ways are also possible in which the passage of kundalini is not used, but they are more arduous. In these other methods there is no question of kundalini, then there is no movement through this passage. There are Hindu methods: raja yoga, mantra yoga, and all the many techniques of tantra. There are Christian methods, Buddhist methods, zen methods, taoist methods. They are not concerned with kundalini awakening; that passage is not used. They use other passages, passages that do not even belong to the etheric body. Astral passages can be used. The astral body, the third body, has its own passage. The mental body, the fourth body, has its own passage. All of the seven bodies have their own passages. There are many yogas that have nothing to do with kundalini. Only hatha yoga uses kundalini as a passage. But it is the most scientific and the least difficult. It is an easier step-by-step method for gradual awakening than the other yogas. Even if the kundalini passage is not used, there are sometimes sudden awakenings of the kundalini. Sometimes things happen that are beyond your capacity, sometimes things happen that you cannot conceive; then you are completely shattered. Other passages have their own preparations. Tantric or occult methods are not kundalini yoga. Kundalini yoga is only one of so many methods, but it is better to be concerned with just one. The Dynamic Meditation method that I am using is concerned with kundalini. It is easier to work with kundalini because it is the second body that you are concerned with. The more deeply you go – with the third or the fourth body – the more difficult it becomes. The second body is the nearest one to your physical body, and there are corresponding points in your physical body, so it is easier. If you work with the third body, the corresponding points are in the second body. If you work with the fourth, the corresponding points are in the third. Then your physical body is not concerned; you cannot feel anything at all in your physical body. But with kundalini you can feel each step accurately, and you know where you are. Then you are more confident. With the other methods you will have to learn techniques that will help you to feel the corresponding points in the second body or in the third body, and that takes its own time. The other methods will deny kundalini, but their denial is not correct; they deny it because they are not concerned with it. Kundalini has its own methodology; if you are working with a zen method, you should not be concerned with kundalini. But sometimes, even in working with another method, kundalini comes, because the seven bodies penetrate one another; they are interlinked. So if you are working with the astral body, the third body, the second body may begin to work. It may get a spark from the third. The opposite is not possible. If you are working with the second body, the third body will not get ignited because the second is lower than the third. But if you are working with the third, you are creating energy that can come to the second without any effort on your part. Energy flows to lower fields. Your second body is lower than the third, so energy generated in the third may sometimes flow to it. Kundalini may be felt through other methods, but those who teach methods that are not concerned with kundalini will not allow you to pay attention to it. If you pay attention to it, more and more energy will come; the whole method that was not concerned with kundalini will be shattered. They do not know anything about kundalini, so they do not know how to work with it. Teachers of other methods will deny kundalini completely. They will say it is nonsense; they will say it is imagination; they will say you are just projecting: ”Do not be concerned with it, do not be attentive to it.” And if you are not attentive to it and you go on working on the third body, by and by the kundalini will stop. Energy will no longer come to the second body. Then it is better. So if you are concerned with any method, be concerned with it totally. Don’t be involved in any other method, don’t even think about any other method, because then it will become confusing. And the passage of kundalini is so subtle and so unknown that confusion will be harmful. My method of Dynamic Meditation is concerned with kundalini. Even if you just go on watching your breath, it will be helpful to kundalini because breath, accompanied by prana, the life energy, is concerned with the etheric body, the second body. It, too, is not concerned with your physical body. It is being taken from your physical body, it is being drawn from your physical body, but your physical body is just the door. Prana is concerned with the etheric body. The lungs are doing the breathing, but doing it for the etheric body. Your physical body, the first body, is working for the etheric, the second body. In the same way, the etheric works for the astral, the third body, and the astral works for the mental, the fourth body.Your physical body is the door for the second body. The second body is so subtle that it cannot be concerned with the material world directly, so first your physical body transmutes every material into vital forms; then these can become food for the second body. Everything taken from the senses gets transformed into vital forms; this then becomes food for the second body. Then the second body transforms this into even more subtle forms, and this becomes food for the third body. It is like this: you cannot eat mud, but in vegetables the elements of the mud are transformed; then it can be eaten. The vegetable world transforms the mud into a living, subtle form; now you can take it in. You cannot eat grass; a cow does it for you. It goes into the cow, and the cow transforms it into milk; then you can take it, you can drink the milk. Just like this your first body takes matter into it, transforming it into vital forms; then the second body takes it. Breath is being taken by your lungs: the lungs are machines, working for the second body. If the second body dies, the lungs remain all right, but there is no breathing; breath has gone. The second body is the master of the first body, and the third body is the master of the second body. Every lower body is a servant to the upper one. So awareness of breathing is helpful in kundalini practice. It generates energy; it conserves energy and helps the life force to go upward. My whole method is concerned with kundalini. Once the method has been grasped, everything can be done by it. Now, nothing more is needed. The last chakra, the sahasrar, can be reached through any method. Sahasrar and brahma randhra are the names given to the seventh chakra in kundalini yoga. If you do not work on kundalini, if you work on the third body, then too you will reach this point, but it will not be known as brahma randhra, and the first six chakras will not be there. You have gone through another passage, so the milestones will be different, but the end will be the same. All the seven bodies are connected with the seventh chakra, so from anywhere one can reach it. One must not be concerned with two passages, with two methods; otherwise, confusion will be created and the inner energy will be diverted into two channels. Any method should channel the whole energy into one dimension. That is what my method of Dynamic Meditation does, and that is why it begins with ten minutes of deep, fast breathing.

This is answer is given by the Mystic “Osho”.

No, it is different. There may be a person who has never seen a snake. If his kundalini awakens, he cannot conceive of it as ”serpent power”; it is impossible because the symbol is not there. Then he will feel it in different ways. This has to be understood. In the West they cannot conceive of kundalini as serpent power because the serpent is not a reality in their ordinary lives. It was in ancient India: the serpent was your neighbor, your day-to-day neighbor; and it was one of the most powerful things perceived, with the most beautiful movements. So the serpent symbol was chosen to represent the phenomenon of kundalini. But elsewhere the serpent cannot be the symbol; it becomes unnatural. Snakes are not known; then you cannot conceive of it, you cannot even imagine it. Symbols are there and they are meaningful as far as your personality is concerned, but a particular symbol is meaningful only if it is real to you, only if it fits into your mental makeup.

This is answer is given by the Mystic “Osho”.

Really, no matter what we call it, we will miss it. Any conceptualization is going to miss the real – any conceptualization – so whatever has been known as the self, the soul, the atman, is not the real thing. It cannot be. All those who have defined it, have defined it with a condition: that they are trying something that is absurd. That which cannot be said they are saying; that which cannot be defined they are defining; that which cannot be known they are making a theory about. There have been three attitudes about it. First, there have been the mystics, the knowers, who have remained totally silent about it. They will not give any definition; they say definition is futile. Then there has been another group of mystics – the largest group – that says, ”Even an effort that is futile can be helpful. Sometimes even untrue theory leads to truth, sometimes even wrongs may become rights, sometimes even a false step may lead you to a right end. It may look false at the moment, or in the end it may even prove false, but still, false devices can help.” This second group feels that by remaining silent you are still saying something, that nothing can be said. And this second type of mystic has a point. Definitions belong to them. Then there is a third type who has been neither silent nor who has defined. They have just denied the whole thing in order that you will not be at all obsessed with it. Buddha belongs to this third type. If you ask him whether there is a soul, whether there is God, whether there is an existence beyond life, he will just deny it. Even on the verge of death when someone asked him, ”Will you be, beyond death?” he denied it. He said, ”No! I will not be. I will drop out of existence just like a flame that goes out.” You can’t ask where the flame is when it goes out; it just ceases. That is why Buddha says that nirvana means ”cessation of the flame,” not just moksha, not just liberation. Buddha says, ”This is liberation: to cease completely. To be is to be somewhere, somehow, in slavery.” This is the third type. These three types all quarrel, because one who speaks is bound to feel that those who have remained silent are not compassionate enough, that they should have said something for those who cannot understand silence. And those who have defined, have defined in so many ways that there are quarrels about it: quarreling is bound to be there. All definitions are devices. One can define in any way; Mahavira defines in one way and Shankara is going to define in another way, because all definitions are equally false or true. It makes no difference. How one defines depends on the type of person he is. There are so many definitions, and those definitions have become so many religions, so many philosophical systems. They have made man’s mind so confused by now that really it sometimes appears that those who have remained silent were more compassionate. Definitions have become conflicts. One definition cannot allow the other, otherwise it contradicts itself. Mahavira tried to say that every definition has some truth in it, but only some; then something remains false about every definition. But it was impossible for Mahavira to have a big following because if you do not define clearly, the confused mind becomes even more confused. If you say, ”Every path is right,” then you are saying, ”There is no path,” and one who has come to find the path is just bewildered. You cannot get any help from me if I say, ”Every path is right: wherever you go, you go to the divine. Go anywhere, do anything, everything has some truth.” It is true, but still it is not helpful. If you define in a particular way and make the definition absolute, all other definitions become false. Because Shankara has to define things exactly he may say, ”Buddha is not right, he is wrong.” But if Buddha is made to appear wrong, it just creates confusion. How can a Buddha be wrong? How can a Christ be wrong? Is only Shankara right? Then there are conflicts. Even the third attitude, the Buddhist attitude of denying, has not helped. It has not helped because by denying the very search is lost, and without the search there is no need of denying. Very few people are capable of understanding what total cessation is. The lust for life is so deep-rooted that we are even reaching for a god who is a part of our lust for life: we are searching for more life, really. Even if we are searching for moksha, we are not searching for total death. We want to be there somehow. Buddha had been asked, and asked continuously for forty years, only one question: ”If we are to cease completely, then why this whole effort? It seems meaningless! Just to cease? Just to not be? Why this whole effort?” And yet people around Buddha felt that he had not ceased; really, he had become more – that was the feeling. Buddha had become something more, but still he went on denying and denying. How can you define something that cannot be defined? But you will either have to be silent or you will have to define it.As for me, I do not fall into any of these three groups; that is why I cannot be consistent. Each of these three types can be consistent, but I am not concerned with the concept of soul at all. I am always concerned with the questioner, the one who has asked. How can he be helped? If I think that he can be helped through positive faith, then I proclaim it; if I feel that he can be helped by silence, then I remain silent; if I feel he can be helped by definition, then I give the definition. To me, everything is just a device. There is nothing serious about it: it is just a device. A definition may not be true; in fact, if I have to make it meaningful to you, it cannot be true really. You have not known what soul is; you have not known what this explosion is which we call Brahman, the divine. You do not know the meaning, you know only the words. Words that you have not experienced are just meaningless sounds. You can create the sound ”god,” but unless you have known God it is just a sound. ”Heart” is a meaningful word, ”cow” is a meaningful word, because you have yourself experienced what they mean. But ”god” is just a word for you, ”soul” is just a word. If I have to help you, I can help you only with a false definition, because you have no experience of God, no experience of the soul. And unless I can define it by something you know, a definition will be useless. For a person who has never known a flower but has known a diamond, I must define flowers through diamonds. There is no other way. A flower has nothing to do with diamonds, but still, something can be indicated through it. I can say, ”Flowers are living diamonds: living diamonds!” The whole thing is false – diamonds are irrelevant – but if I say, ”Flowers are living diamonds, growing diamonds,” I create a desire in you to experience them. A definition is there only to help you to move to the experience. All definitions are like that. If you have not known diamonds, if you have not known anything positive for me to define through, then I have to define through negatives. If you do not have any positive feeling for anything, I will define through negatives. I will say, ”The misery that you have is not part of the soul. The dukkha, the anguish that you are, is not part of the soul.” I have to define negatively in terms of something with which you are crippled, from which you are dying; in terms of something with which you are burdened, which has become just a hell to you. I have to define negatively by saying, ”It will not be this, it will be just the opposite.” So with me it depends. It depends. I have no absolute answers, I have only devices – only psychological answers. And the answer does not depend on me, it depends on you: because of you I have to give a particular answer. That is why I cannot be a guru – never! Buddha can become one but I never can. Because you are so inconsistent, every individual is so different, how can I become consistent? I cannot. And I cannot create a sect, because for this consistency is very much needed. If you want to create a sect you must be consistent, foolishly consistent; you must deny all inconsistencies. They are there but you must deny them, otherwise you cannot attract followers. So I am less a guru and more like a psychiatrist – plus something. To me, you are meaningful. If you can understand this, then something more can be said. By ”consciousness” I mean a movement toward total aliveness. You are never totally alive; sometimes you are more alive – that you know – and sometimes you are less alive. And when you are more alive you feel happy. Happiness is nothing but an interpretation of your greater aliveness. If you love someone, then you become more alive with him, and that greater aliveness gives you the feeling of happiness. Then you go on projecting the reasons for your happiness onto someone else. When you encounter nature you are more alive, when you are on a mountain you become more alive, and when you are just living with machines you are less alive, because of the whole association. With trees you become more alive because you have once been trees. Deep down we are just walking trees – with roots in the air, not in the earth. And when you face the ocean you feel more alive because the first life was born in the ocean. In fact, in our bodies we still have the same composition of water as the ocean, the same salt quantity as the ocean has. When you are with a woman, if you are of the opposite sex, you begin to feel more alive than with a man. With a man you feel less alive because nothing is pulling you out. You are enclosed, the opposite energy pulls you out; the flame flickers, you can be more alive. And whenever you begin to feel more alive, you begin to feel happy. When we use the word soul, we mean total aliveness; total aliveness not with someone else but with yourself; total aliveness with no outward causes. The ocean is not there and you become oceanic; the sky is not there and you become the whole space; the beloved is not there and you are just love, nothing else. What I mean is that you begin to be alive independently. There is no dependence on anything or anyone: you are liberated. And with this liberation, this inner liberation, your happiness cannot be lost. It is total aliveness, it is total consciousness. It cannot be lost. With this total aliveness many things happen that cannot really be understood unless they have happened. But tentatively I can give you this definition of the soul as being totally conscious, totally alive, totally blissful, without being bound by anything. If you begin to love, or if you can be happy without a reason, then you are soul, not a body. Why then? By body I mean the part of your soul that always exists in relation to the outside existence. You begin to feel sad when some cause for sadness is there, or you begin to feel good when some cause for happiness is there, but you never feel yourself without something else being there. That feeling, that state when nothing is there, but you are in your total aliveness, in your total consciousness, is the soul. But this is a tentative definition. It just indicates; it doesn’t define, it just shows. Much is there, but it is just a finger pointing to the moon. Never mistake the finger for the moon. The finger is not the moon, it is just an indication. Forget the finger and look at the moon. But all definitions are like that. You ask whether the soul is individual. It is a meaningless question, but it is pertinent because of you. It is like a question that a blind man would ask. A blind man moves with his staff. He cannot move without it: he searches and gropes in the dark with it. If we talk to him about operating on his eyes to heal them so he can see, the blind man can ask, very pertinently, ”When I have my eyes will I still be able to grope in the dark with my staff?” If we say, ”You will not need your staff,” he cannot believe it. He will say, ”Without my staff I cannot exist, I cannot live. What you are saying is not acceptable. I cannot conceive of it. Without my staff, I am not. So what will become of my staff? First you tell me!” Really, this individuality is like the blind man’s staff. You are groping in the dark with an ego because you have no soul; this ego, this ”I,” is just a groping because you do not have eyes. The moment you have become totally alive, the ego is just lost. It was part of your blindness, part of your nonaliveness or partial aliveness, part of your unconsciousness, part of your ignorance. It just drops. It is not that you are individual or you are not individual; both things become irrelevant. Individuality is not relevant, but questions continue because the source of questioning remains the same. When Maulingaputta came to Buddha for the first time he asked many questions. Buddha said, ”Are you asking in order to solve the questions or are you only asking to get answers?” Maulingaputta said, ”I have come to ask you, and you have begun to ask me! Let me ponder over it, I must think about it.” He thought about it and the second day he said, ”Really, I have come to solve them.” Buddha said to him, ”Have you asked these same questions to anyone else as well?” Maulingaputta said, ”I have asked everyone continuously for thirty years.” Buddha said, ”By asking for thirty years you must have got many answers – many, many. But have any proved to be the answer?” Maulingaputta said, ”None!” Then Buddha said, ”I will not give you any answers. In thirty years of questioning many answers have been given; I can add some more but that is not going to help. So I will give you the solution, not the answer.” Maulingaputta said, ”Okay, give it to me.” But Buddha said, ”It cannot be given by me, it has to be grown in you. So remain for one year with me silently. Not a single question will be allowed. Be totally silent, be with me, and after one year you can ask; then I will give you the answer.” Sariputta, the chief disciple of Buddha, was sitting nearby under a tree. He began to laugh. Maulingaputta asked, ”Why is Sariputta laughing? What is there to laugh about?” Sariputta said, ”Ask right now if you have to ask; do not wait for one year. We have been fooled – this happened to me too – because after one year we never ask. If you have remained totally silent for a year, then the very source of questioning drops. And this man is deceptive! This man is very deceptive,” Sariputta said. ”After one year he will not give you any answers.” So Buddha said, ”I will remain with my promise, Sariputta. I have remained with my promise with you, too. It is not my fault that you do not ask.” One year went by and Maulingaputta remained silent: silently doing meditation and becoming more and more silent outwardly and inwardly. Then he became a silent pool, with no vibrations, no waves. He forgot that the year had passed. The day that he was to ask had come but he himself forgot. Buddha said, ”There used to be a man called Maulingaputta here. Where is he? He has to ask some question. The year has passed, the day has come, so he must come to me.” There were ten thousand monks there and everyone tried to find out who Maulingaputta was. And Maulingaputta also tried to find out where he was! Buddha called to him and said, ”Why are you looking around? You are the man. And I have to fulfill my promise, so you ask and I will give you the answer.” Maulingaputta said, ”The one who was asking is dead; that is why I was looking around to see who this man Maulingaputta is. I too have heard his name, but he is long since gone.” The original source must be transformed, otherwise we go on asking; and there are persons who will be supplying you with answers. You feel good in asking, they feel good in answering, but what goes on is only a mutual deception.

This is answer is given by the Mystic “Osho”.

LSD can be used as a help, but the help is very dangerous; it is not so easy. If you use a mantra, even that can become difficult to throw, but if you use acid, LSD it will be even more difficult to throw. The moment you are on an LSD trip you are not in control. Chemistry takes control and you are not the master, and once you are not the master it is difficult to regain that position. The chemical is not the slave now, you are the slave. Now how to control it is not going to be your choice. Once you take LSD as a help you are making a slave of the master and your whole body chemistry will be affected by it. Your body will begin to crave LSD. Now the craving will not just be of the mind as it is when you get attached to a mantra. When you use acid as a help, the craving becomes part of the body; the LSD goes to the very cells of the body. It changes them. Your inner chemical structure becomes different. Then all the body cells begin to crave acid and it will be difficult to drop it. LSD can be used to bring you to meditation only if your body has been prepared for it. So if you ask if it can be used in the West, I will say that it is not for the West at all. It can be used only in the East – if the body is totally prepared for it. Yoga has used it, tantra has used it, there are schools of tantra and yoga that have used LSD as a help, but then they prepare your body first. There is a long process of purification of the body. Your body becomes so pure and you become such a great master of it that even chemistry cannot become your master now. So yoga allows it, but in a very specific way. First your body must be purified chemically. Then you will be in such control of the body that even your body chemistry can be controlled. For example, there are certain yogic exercises: if you take poison, through a particular yogic exercise you can order your blood not to mix with it and the poison will pass through the body and come out in the urine without having mixed with the blood at all. If you can do this, if you can control your body chemistry, then you can use anything, because you have remained the master. In tantra, particularly in ”leftist” tantra, they use alcohol to help meditation. It looks absurd; it is not. The seeker will take alcohol in a particular quantity and then will try to be alert. Consciousness must not be lost. By and by the quantity of alcohol will be raised, but the consciousness must remain alert. The person has taken alcohol, it has been absorbed in the body, but the mind remains above it; consciousness is not lost. Then the quantity of alcohol is raised higher and higher. Through this practice a point comes when any amount of alcohol can be given and the mind remains alert. Only then can LSD be a help. In the West there are no practices to purify the body or to increase consciousness through changes in body chemistry. Acid is taken without any preparation in the West. It is not going to help; rather, on the contrary, it may destroy the whole mind. There are many problems. Once you have been on an LSD trip you have a glimpse of something you have never known, something you have never felt. If you begin to practice meditation it is a long process, but LSD is not a process. You take it and the process is over; then the body begins to work. Meditation is a long process – you have to do it for years, only then will the results be forthcoming. And when you have experienced a shortcut, it will be difficult to follow a long process. The mind will crave to return to using the drugs. So it is difficult to meditate once you have known a glimpse through chemistry; to undertake something that is a long process will be difficult. Meditation needs more stamina, more trust, more waiting, and it will be difficult because now you can compare. Secondly, any method is bad if you are not in control all the time. When you are meditating you can stop at any moment. If you want to stop, you can stop this very moment; you can come out of it. You cannot stop an LSD trip: once you have taken LSD you have to complete the circle. Now you are not the master. Anything that makes a slave of you is ultimately not going to help spiritually, because spirituality basically means to be the master of oneself. So I wouldn’t suggest shortcuts. I am not against LSD, I may sometimes be for it, but then a long preliminary preparation is necessary. Then you will be the master. But then LSD is not a shortcut. It will take even longer than meditation. Hatha yoga takes years to prepare a body – twenty years, twenty-five years, then a body is ready; now you can use any chemical help and it will not be destructive to your being. But then the process is far longer. Then LSD can be used; I am in favor of it then. If you are prepared to take twenty years to prepare the body in order to take LSD, then it is not destructive. But the same thing can be done in two years with meditation. Because the body is more gross, mastery is more difficult. The mind is more subtle so mastery is easier. The body is further away from your being, so there is a greater gap; with the mind the gap is shorter. In India the primitive method to prepare the body to be ready for meditation was hatha yoga. It took so long a time to prepare the body that sometimes hatha yoga had to invent methods to prolong life so that hatha yoga could be continued. It was such a long process that sixty years might not be enough, seventy years might not be enough. And there is a problem: if the mastery is not achieved in this life then in the next life you have to begin from abc because you have a new body. The whole effort has been lost. You do not have a new mind in your next life, the old mind continues, so whatever is attained through the mind remains with you, but whatever is attained through the body is lost with every death. So hatha yoga had to invent methods to prolong life for two hundred to three hundred years so that mastery could be attained. If the mastery is of the mind then you can change the body, but the preparedness of the body belongs to the body alone. Hatha yoga invented many methods so that the process could be completed, but then even greater methods were discovered: how to control the mind directly – raja yoga. With these methods the body can be a little helpful, but there is no need to be too concerned with it. So hatha yoga adepts have said that LSD can be used, but raja yoga cannot say LSD can be used, because raja yoga has no methodology to prepare the body. Direct meditation is used. Sometimes it happens – only sometimes, rarely – that if you have a glimpse through LSD and do not become addicted to it, that glimpse may become a thirst in you to seek something further. So to try it once is good, but it becomes difficult to know where to stop and how to stop. The first trip is good, to be on it once is good; you become aware of a different world and then you begin to seek, you begin to search, because of it – but then it becomes difficult to stop. This is the problem. If you can stop, then to take LSD once is good. But that ”if” is a great one. Mulla Nasruddin used to say that he never took more than one glass of wine. Many friends objected to his statement because they had seen him taking one glass after another. He said, ”The second glass is taken by the first; ’I’ take only one. The second is taken by the first and the third by the second. Then I am not the master. I am master only for the first, so how can I say that I take more than one? ’I’ take only one – always only one!” With the first you are the master; with the second you are not. The first will try to take a second, and then it will go on continuously; then it is no longer in your hands. To begin anything is easy because you are the master, but to end anything is difficult because then you are not the master. So I am not against LSD, and if I am against it, it is conditional. This is the condition: if you can remain the master, then okay. Use anything, but remain the master. And if you cannot remain the master, then do not enter into a dangerous road at all. Do not enter at all; it will be better.

This is answer is given by the Mystic “Osho”.

This, again, will be very difficult to explain. If intuition comes through some kind of waves, then sooner or later the intellect will be able to explain it. It comes without any medium; that is the point. It comes without a vehicle! It travels without any vehicle, that is why it is a jump, that is why it is a leap. If some waves are there and it comes to you through those waves, then it is not a jump, it is not a leap. It is a jump from one point to another point, with no interconnection between the two; that is why it is a jump. If I come to you step by step, it is not a jump; only if I come to you without any steps is it a jump. And a real jump is even deeper: it means that something exists on point A and then it exists on point B, and between the two there is no existence. That is a real jump. Intuition is a jump. It is not something coming to you; that is a linguistic error. It is not something coming to you: it is something happening to you, not coming to you – something happening to you without any causality anywhere, without any source anywhere. This sudden happening means intuition. If it is not sudden, not completely discontinuous with what went before, then reason will discover the path. It will take time, but it can be done. If some X-rays, some waves or anything are carrying it to you, reason will be capable of knowing and understanding and controlling it. If intuition comes through rays or waves, then we can make an instrument to receive them. Then Mohammed is not needed. But as I see it, Mohammed will be needed. No instrument can pick up intuition because it is not a wave phenomenon. It is not a phenomenon at all; it is just a leap from nothing to being. Intuition means just that. That is why reason denies it. Reason denies it because reason is incapable of encountering it; reason can only encounter phenomena that can be divided into cause and effect. According to reason there are two realms of existence: the known and the unknown. And the unknown means that which is not yet known, but someday will be known. But religion says that there are three realms: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. By the unknowable religion means that which can never be known. Intellect is involved with the known and the unknown, not with the unknowable, and intuition works with the unknowable, with that which cannot be known. It is not just a question of time before it will be known; ”unknowability” is its intrinsic quality. It is not that your instruments are not fine enough or your logic not up to date or your mathematics primitive – that is not the question. The intrinsic quality of the unknowable is unknowability; it will always exist as the unknowable. This is the realm of intuition. When something from the unknowable comes to be known, it is a jump. It is a jump! There is no interlink, there is no passage, there is no going from one point to another point. But it seems inconceivable, so when I say, ”You can feel it, but you cannot understand it,” when I say such things, I know very well that I am uttering nonsense. Nonsense only means ”that which cannot be understood by our senses.” And mind is a sense, the most subtle, and wisdom is a sense. Intuition is possible because the unknowable is there. Science denies the existence of the divine because it says, ”There is only one division: the known and the unknown. If there is any God, we will discover him through laboratory methods. If he exists, science will discover him.” Religion, on the other hand, says, ”Whatever you do, something in the very foundation of existence will remain unknowable – a mystery.” And if religion is not right then I think that science is going to destroy the whole meaning of life. If there is no mystery, the whole meaning of life is destroyed and the whole beauty is destroyed. The unknowable is the beauty, the meaning, the aspiration, the goal. Because of the unknowable, life means something. When everything is known, then everything is flat. You will be fed up, bored. The unknowable is the secret; it is life itself. I will say this: that reason is an effort to know the unknown and intuition is the happening of the unknowable. To penetrate the unknowable is possible, but to explain it is not. The feeling is possible; the explanation is not. The more you try to explain it the more closed you will become, so do not try. Let reason work in its own field, but remember continuously that there are deeper realms. There are deeper reasons which reason cannot understand, higher reasons that reason is incapable of conceiving.

This is answer is given by the Mystic “Osho”.

Prana is energy – the living energy in us, the life in us. This life manifests itself, as far as the physical body is concerned, as the incoming and the outgoing breath. These are two opposite things. We take them as one. We say ”breathing” – but breathing has two polarities: the incoming breath and the outgoing breath. Every energy has polarities, every energy exists in two opposite poles. It cannot exist otherwise. The opposite poles, with their tension and harmony, create energy – just like magnetic poles. The incoming breath is quite contrary to the outgoing, and the outgoing is quite contrary to the incoming. In a single moment the incoming is just like birth and the outgoing is just like death. In a single moment both things are happening: when you take breath in, you are born; when you throw breath out, you die. In a single moment there is birth and death. This polarity is life energy coming up, going down. In the physical body, life energy takes this manifestation. Life energy is born, and after seventy years it dies. That too is a greater manifestation of the same phenomenon: the incoming breath and the outgoing breath… the day and the night. In all of the seven bodies – the physical, the etheric, the astral, the mental, the spiritual, the cosmic, and the nirvanic, there will be a corresponding incoming and outgoing phenomenon. As far as the mental body is concerned, thought coming in and thought going out is the same kind of phenomenon as breath coming in and breath going out. Every moment a thought comes in your mind and a thought goes out.
Thought itself is energy. In the mental body the energy manifests as the coming of thought and the going of thought; in the physical body it manifests as breath coming and breath going. That is why you can change your thinking with breathing. There is a correspondence. If you stop your breath from coming in, thought will be stopped from coming in. Stop your breath in your physical body and in the mental body thought will stop. And as the physical body becomes uneasy, your mental body will become uneasy. The physical body will long to breathe in; the mental body will long to take thought in. Just as breath is taken in from the outside and the air exists outside you, likewise an ocean of thought exists outside you. Thought comes in, and thought goes out. Your breath can become my breath at another moment and your thought can become my thought. Every time you throw your breath out you are likewise throwing your thought out. Just as air exists, so thought exists; just as air can be contaminated, so thought can be contaminated; just as air can be impure, so thought can be impure. The breath itself is not prana. Prana means the vital energy that manifests itself by these polarities of coming in and going out. The energy that takes the breath in is prana, not the breath itself. The energy that takes breath in, which asserts it, that energy that is taking the breath in and throwing it out, is prana. The energy that takes thought in and throws thought out, that energy too is prana. In all of the seven bodies, this process exists. I am only talking now of the physical and the mental, because these two are known to us; we can understand them easily. But in every layer of your being the same thing exists. Your second body, the etheric body, has its own incoming and outgoing process. You will feel this process in each of the seven bodies, but you will feel it to be just like the incoming breath and outgoing breath, because you are only acquainted with your physical body and its prana. Then you will always misunderstand. Whenever any feeling comes to you of another body or its prana you will first understand it as the coming in and the going out of breath, because this is the only experience you know. You have only known this manifestation of prana, of vital energy. But on the etheric plane there is neither breath nor thought, but influence – simply influence coming in and going out. You come into contact with somebody without having known him before. He has not even talked with you, but something about him comes in. You have either taken him in or thrown him out. There is a subtle influence: you may call it love or you may call it hatred – the attractive or the repulsive. When you are repulsed or attracted, it is your second body. And every moment the process is going on; it never stops. You are always taking influences in and then throwing them out. The other pole will always be there. If you have loved someone, then in a certain moment you will be repulsed. If you have loved someone the breath has been taken in: now it will be thrown out and you will be repulsed. So every moment of love will be followed by a moment of repulsion. The vital energy exists in polarities. It never exists at one pole. It cannot! And whenever you try to make it do so, you try the impossible.You cannot love someone without hating him at some time. The hatred will be there because the vital force cannot exist at a single pole. It exists at opposite polarities, so a friend is bound to be an enemy – and this will go on. This coming in and going out will happen up to the seventh body. No body can exist without this process – this coming in and going out. It cannot, just as the physical body cannot exist without the incoming and outgoing breath. As far as the physical body is concerned, we never take these two things as opposites, so we are not disturbed about it. Life makes no distinction between the incoming breath and the outgoing breath. There is no moral distinction. There is nothing to be chosen; both are the same. The phenomenon is natural. But as far as the second body is concerned, hatred must not be there and love must be there. Then you have begun to choose. You have begun to choose, and this choice will create disturbances. That is why the physical body is ordinarily more healthy than the second, the etheric, body. The etheric body is always in conflict because moral choosing has made a hell out of it. When love comes to you, you feel a wellbeing, but when hatred comes to you, you feel diseased. But it is bound to come – so a person who knows, a person who has understood the polarities, is not disappointed when it comes. A person who has known the polarities is at ease, at equilibrium. He knows it is bound to happen, so he neither tries to love when he is not loving nor does he create any hatred. Things come and go: he is not attracted to the incoming nor repulsed by the outgoing. He is just a witness. He says, ”It is just like breath coming in and breath going out.” The Buddhist meditation method of Anapana-sati Yoga is concerned with this. It says to just be a witness to your incoming and outgoing breath. Just be a witness, and begin from the physical body. The other six bodies are not talked about in Anapana-sati because they will come by themselves, by and by. The more you become acquainted with this polarity – with this dying and living simultaneously, with this simultaneous birth and death – the more you will become aware of the second body. Toward hatred, then, Buddha says, have upeksha. Be indifferent. Whether it is hatred or it is love, be indifferent. And do not be attached to anyone, because if you are attached, what will happen to the other pole? Then you will be at a ”dis-ease.” Disease will be there; you will not be at ease. Buddha says, ”The coming of the beloved one is welcomed, but the going of the beloved one is wept over. The meeting with the one who is repulsive is a misery, and the departing of a repulsive one is bliss. But if you go on dividing yourself into these polarities, you will be in hell, living in a hell.” If you just become a witness to these polarities, then you say, ”This is a natural phenomenon. It is natural to the ’body’ concerned” – that is, one of the seven bodies. ”The body exists because of this; otherwise, it cannot exist.” And the moment you become aware of it, you transcend the body. If you transcend your first body, then you become aware of the second. If you transcend your second body, then you become aware of the third…. Witnessing is always beyond life and death. The breath coming in and the breath going out are two things, and if you become a witness, then you are neither. Then a third force has come into being. Now you are not the manifestations of prana in the physical body: now you are the prana,the witness. Now you see that life manifests on the physical level because of this polarity, and if this polarity stops the physical body will not be there, it cannot exist. It needs tension to exist – this constant tension of coming and going, this constant tension of birth and death. It exists because of this. Every moment it moves between the two poles; otherwise, it would not exist. In the second body, ”love and hate” is the basic polarity. It is manifested in so many ways. The basic polarity is this liking and disliking, and every moment your liking becomes disliking and your disliking becomes liking – every moment! But you never see it. When your liking becomes disliking, if you suppress your disliking and continue fooling yourself that you will go on liking the same things always, you are only fooling yourself doubly. And if you dislike something, you go on disliking it, never allowing yourself to see the moments when you have liked it. We suppress our love for our enemies, and we suppress our hatred for our friends. We are suppressing! We allow only one movement, only one pole, but because it comes back again, we are at ease. It returns, so we are at ease. But it is discontinuous; it is never continuous. It never can be. The vital force manifests itself as like and dislike in the second body. But it is just like breath: there is no difference. Influence is the medium here; air is the medium in the physical body. The second body lives in an atmosphere of influences. It is not simply that someone comes in contact with you and you begin to like him. Even if no one comes in and you are alone in the room, you will be liking/disliking, liking/disliking. It will make no difference: the liking and disliking will go on alternating continuously. It is through this polarity that the etheric body exists; it is its breath. If you become a witness to it, then you can just laugh. Then there is no enemy and no friend. Then you know it is just a natural phenomenon. If you become aware and become a witness to the second body – to the liking and disliking – then you can know the third body. The third is the astral body. Just like the ”influences” of the etheric body, the astral body has ”magnetic forces.” Its magnetism is its breath. One moment you are powerful and the next moment you are powerless; one moment you are hopeful and the next moment you are hopeless; one moment you are confident and the next moment you lose all your confidence. It is a coming in of magnetism to you and a going out of magnetism from you. There are moments when you can defy even God, and there are moments when you fear even a shadow. When the magnetic force is in you, when it is coming into you, you are great; when it has gone from you, you are just a nobody. And this is changing back and forth, just like day and night; the circle revolves, the wheel revolves. So even a person like Napoleon had his impotent moments and even a very cowardly person has his moments of bravery. In judo there is a technique to know when a person is powerless. That is the moment to attack him. When he is powerful you are bound to be defeated, so you have to know the moment when his magnetic power is going out and attack him then, and you should incite him to attack you when your magnetic force is coming in. This coming in and going out of the magnetic force corresponds to your breathing. That is why, when you have to do something difficult, you will hold your breath in. For example, if you are to lift a heavy stone, you cannot pick it up when the breath is going out. You cannot do it! But when the breath is coming in, or when the breath is held in, you can do it. Your breath corresponds to what is happening in the third body. So when the breath is going out – unless the person has been trained to fool you – that is the moment when his magnetic force is going out; that is the moment to attack. And this is the secret of judo. Even a stronger person than you can be defeated if you know the secret of when he is fearful and powerless. When the magnetic force is out of him, he is bound to be powerless. The third body lives in a magnetic sphere, just like air. There are magnetic forces all around: you are breathing them in and breathing them out. But if you become aware of this magnetic force that is coming and going, then you are neither powerful nor powerless. You transcend both. Then there is the fourth body, the mental body: thought pulling in and thought pulling out. But this ”thought coming in” and ”thought going out” has parallels, too. When thought comes to you while you breathe in, only in those moments is original thinking born. When you breathe out, those are moments of impotency; no original thought can be born in those moments. In moments when some original thought is there, the breathing will even stop. When some original thought is born, then the breath stops. It is only a corresponding phenomenon. In the outgoing thought, nothing is born. It is simply dead. But if you become aware of thoughts coming in and thoughts going out, then you can know the fifth body. Up to the fourth body things are not difficult to understand, because we have some experience which can become the basis to understand them. Beyond the fourth, things become very strange – but still, something can be understood. And when you transcend the fourth body you will understand it more. In the fifth body… how to say it? The atmosphere for the fifth body is life – just as thought, as breath, as magnetic force, as love and hatred, are atmospheres for the lower bodies. For the fifth body, life itself is the atmosphere. So in the fifth, the coming in is a moment of life, and the going out is a moment of death. With the fifth, you become aware that life is not something that is in you. It comes into you and goes out from you. Life itself is not in you; it simply comes in and goes out just like breath. That is why breath and prana became synonymous – because of the fifth body. In the fifth body, the word prana is meaningful. It is life that is coming and life that is going. And that is why the fear of death is constantly following us. You are always aware that death is nearby, waiting at the corner. It is always there, waiting. This feeling of death always waiting for you – this feeling of insecurity, of death, of darkness – is concerned with the fifth body. It is a very dark feeling, very vague, because you are not completely aware of it. When you come to the fifth body and become aware of it, then you know that life and death both are just breaths to the fifth body – coming in and going out. And when you become aware of this, then you know that you cannot die, because death is not an inherent phenomenon; nor is life. Both life and death are outward phenomena happening to you. You never have been alive, you never have been dead; you are something that completely transcends both. But this feeling of transcendence can only come when you become aware of the life force and the death force in the fifth body.Freud said somewhere that he somehow had a glimpse of this. He was not an adept in yoga, otherwise he would have understood it. He called it ”the will to die,” and he said every man sometimes is longing for life and sometimes is longing for death. There are two opposing wills in men: a will to live and a will to die. To the Western mind it was absolutely absurd: how could these contradictory wills exist in one person? But Freud said that because suicide is possible, there must be a will to die. No animal can commit suicide, because no animal can become aware of the fifth body. Animals cannot commit suicide because they cannot become aware, they cannot know, that they are alive. To commit suicide, one thing is necessary: to be aware of life – and they are not aware of life. But another thing is also necessary: to commit suicide you must also be unaware of death. Animals cannot commit suicide because animals are not aware of life, but we can commit suicide because we are aware of life but not aware of death. If one becomes aware of death, then one cannot commit suicide. A buddha cannot commit suicide because it is unnecessary; it is nonsense. He knows that you cannot really kill yourself, you can only pretend to. Suicide is just a pose, because really you are neither alive nor dead. Death is on the fifth plane, in the fifth body. It is a going out of a particular energy and a coming in of a particular energy. You are the one in which this coming and going happens. If you become identified with the first, you can commit the second. If you become identified with living, and if life becomes impossible, you can say, ”I will commit suicide.” This is the other aspect of your fifth body asserting itself. There is not a single human being who has not thought at some time to commit suicide… because death is the other side of life. This other side can become either suicide or murder: it can become either. If you are obsessed with life, if you are so attached to it that you want to deny death completely, you can kill another. By killing another you satisfy your death wish: ”the will to die.” By this trick you satisfy it, and you think that now you will not have to die because someone else has died. All those persons who have committed great murders – Hitler, Mussolini – are still very much afraid of death. They are always in fear of death, so they project this death on others. The person who can kill someone else feels that he is more powerful than death: he can kill others. In a ”magical way,” with a ”magical formula,” he thinks that because he can kill he transcends death, that a thing he can do to others cannot be done to him. This is a projection of death, but it can come back to you. If you kill so many persons that in the end you commit suicide, it is the projection coming back to you. In the fifth body, with life and death coming to you – with life coming and going – one cannot be attached to anyone. If you are attached, you are not accepting the polarity in its totality, and you will become ill. Up to the fourth body it was not so difficult, but to conceive of death and to accept it as another aspect of life is the most difficult act. To conceive of life and death as parallel – as just the same, as two aspects of one thing – is the most difficult act. But in the fifth, this is the polarity. This is pranic existence in the fifth. With the sixth body, things become even more difficult, because the sixth is no longer life. For the sixth body… what to say? After the fifth, the ”I” drops, the ego drops. Then there is no ego; youbecome one with the all. Now it is not your ”anything” that comes in and goes out because the ego is not. Everything becomes cosmic, and because it becomes cosmic, the polarity takes the form of creation and destruction – srishti and pralaya. That is why it becomes more difficult with the sixth: the atmosphere is ”the creative force and the destructive force.” In Hindu mythology they call these forces Brahma and Shiva. Brahma is the deity of creation, Vishnu is the deity of maintenance, and Shiva is the deity of the great death – of destruction or dissolution, where everything goes back to its original source. The sixth body is in that vast sphere of creativity and destructivity: the force of Brahma and the force of Shiva. Every moment the creation comes to you, and every moment everything goes into dissolution. So when a yogi says, ”I have seen the creation, and I have seen the pralaya, the end; I have seen the coming of the world into being and I have seen the returning of the world into nonbeing,” he is talking about the sixth body. The ego is not there: everything that is coming in and going out is you. You become one with it. A star is being born: it is your birth that is coming. And the star is going out: that is your going out. So they say in Hindu mythology that one creation is one breath of Brahma – only one breath! It is the cosmic force breathing. When he, Brahma, breathes in, the creation comes into existence: a star is born, stars come out of chaos – everything comes into existence. And when his breath goes out, everything goes out, everything ceases: a star dies… existence moves into nonexistence. That is why I am saying that in the sixth body it is very difficult. The sixth is not egocentric; it becomes cosmic. And in the sixth body, everything about creation is known – everything that all of the religions of the world talk about. When one talks about creation, he is talking about the sixth body and the knowledge concerned with it. And when one is talking of the great flood, the end, one is talking about the sixth body. With the great flood of Judeo-Christian or Babylonian mythology, or Syrian mythology, or with the pralaya of the Hindus, there is one out breath – that of the sixth body. This is a cosmic experience, not an individual one. This is a cosmic experience; you are not there! The person who is in the sixth body – who has reached to the sixth body – will see everything that is dying as his own death. A Mahavira cannot kill an ant, not because of any principle of nonviolence, but because it is his death. Everything that dies is his death. When you become aware of this, of the creation and the destruction – of things coming into existence every moment and things going out of existence every moment – the awareness is of the sixth body. Whenever a thing is going out of existence, something else is coming in: a sun is dying, another is being born somewhere else; this earth will die, another earth will come. We become attached even in the sixth body. ”Humanity must not die!” – but everything that is born must die, even humanity must die. Hydrogen bombs will be created to destroy it. And the moment we create hydrogen bombs, the very next moment we create a longing to go to another planet, because the bomb means that the earth is near its death. Before this earth dies, life will begin to evolve somewhere else. The sixth body is the feeling of cosmic creation and destruction – creation/destruction… the breath coming in/the breath going out. That is why ”Brahma’s breath” is used. Brahma is a sixth-body personality; you become Brahma in the sixth body. Really, you become aware of both Brahma and Shiva, the two polarities. And Vishnu is beyond the polarity. They form the trimurti, the trinity: Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh – or Shiva. This trinity is the trinity of witnessing. If you become aware of the Brahma and Shiva, the creator and the destroyer – if you become aware of those two, then you know the third, which is Vishnu. Vishnu is your reality in the sixth body. That is why Vishnu became the most prominent of the three. Brahma is remembered, but although he is the god of creation, he is worshipped in perhaps only one or two temples. He must be worshipped, but he is not really worshipped. Shiva is worshipped even more than Vishnu, because we fear death. The worship of him comes out of our fear of death. But hardly anyone worships Brahma, the god of creation, because there is nothing to be fearful of; you are already created, so you are not concerned with Brahma. That is why not a single great temple is dedicated to him. He is the creator, so every temple should be dedicated to him, but it is not. Shiva has the greatest number of worshippers. He is everywhere, because so many temples were made as a dedication to him. Just a stone is enough to symbolize him; otherwise it would have been impossible to create so many idols of him. So just a stone is enough…. Just put a stone somewhere and Shiva is there. Because the mind is so fearful of death, you cannot escape from Shiva; he must be worshipped – and he has been worshipped. But Vishnu is the more substantial divinity. That is why Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu, Krishna is an incarnation of Vishnu, every avatar – divine incarnation – is an incarnation of Vishnu. And even Brahma and Shiva worship Vishnu. Brahma may be the creator, but he creates for Vishnu; Shiva may be the destroyer, but he destroys for Vishnu. These are the two breaths of Vishnu, the incoming and the outgoing: Brahma is the incoming breath and Shiva is the outgoing one. And Vishnu is the reality in the sixth body. In the seventh body things become even more difficult. Buddha called the seventh body the nirvana kaya, the body of enlightenment, because the truth, the absolute, is in the seventh body. The seventh body is the last body, so there is not even creation and destruction but, rather, being and nonbeing. In the seventh, creation is always of something else, it is not of you. Creation will be of something else and destruction will be of something else, not of you, while being is of you, and nonbeing is of you. In the seventh body, being and nonbeing – existence and nonexistence – are the two breaths. One should not be identified with either. All religions are started by those who have reached the seventh body; and at the end language can be stretched, at the most, to two words: being and nonbeing. Buddha speaks the language of nonbeing, of the outgoing breath, so he says, ”Nothingness is the reality”; while Shankara speaks the language of being and says that the Brahman is the ultimate reality. Shankara uses positive terms because he chooses the incoming breath, and Buddha uses negative terms because he chooses the outgoing breath. But these are the only choices as far as language is concerned. The third choice is the reality, which cannot be said. At the most we can say ”absolute being” or ”absolute nonbeing.” This much can be said, because the seventh body is beyond this. Transcendence is still possible.I can say something about this room if I go out. If I transcend this room and reach another room, I can recollect this one, I can say something about it. But if I go out of this room and fall into an abyss, then I cannot say anything about even this room. So far, with each body, a third point could be caught into words, symbolized, because the body beyond it was there. You could go there and look backward. But only up to the seventh is this possible. Beyond the seventh body nothing can be said, because the seventh is the last body; beyond it is ”bodilessness.” With the seventh, one has to choose being or nonbeing – either the language of negation or the language of positivity. And there are only two choices. One is Buddha’s choice: he says, ”Nothing remains,” and the other is Shankara’s choice: he says, ”Everything remains.” In the seven dimensions – in the seven bodies – as far as man is concerned and as far as the world is concerned, life energy manifests into multidimensional realms. Everywhere, wherever life is to be found, the incoming and the outgoing process will be there. Wherever life is, the process will be. Life cannot exist without this polarity. So prana is energy, cosmic energy, and our first acquaintance with it is in the physical body. It manifests first as breath, and then it goes on manifesting as breath in other forms: influences, magnetism, thoughts, life, creation, being. It goes on, and if one becomes aware of it, one always transcends it to reach to a third point. The moment you reach this third point, you transcend that body and enter the next body. You enter the second body from the first, and so on. If you go on transcending, up to the seventh there is still a body, but beyond the seventh there is bodilessness. Then you become pure. Then you are not divided; then there are no more polarities. Then it is adwait, not two: then it is oneness.

This is answer is given by the Mystic “Osho”.